What exactlly is " connectiuon reset by peer"?

[Dingleberry]

What is it that  in the  middle of my download my connectiuon stops and I get that message"  connection reset by peer"?  What is a peer? Anything I can  do  to stop it  from happeneing?

[White Stripes]

this information was taken from; http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=499501

The TCP error message for receiving a RST from the peer. The TCP close involves exchanges of FIN packets. But if a peer sends FIN, it must still be prepared to accept input from the local host (see TCP half-close). Thus, if the peer wishes the connection to end now, it can ReSeT it. Immediately afterwards, it can recycle all resources allocated to that connection -- the connection is now closed. The local host might as well do the same.

"Connection reset by peer" is the TCP/IP equivalent of slamming the phone back on the hook. It's more polite than merely not replying, leaving one hanging. But it's not the FIN-ACK expected of the truly polite TCP/IP converseur.

basically it means that the connection is no longer stable so it 'resets' .. which will appear as a disconnect but in fact the connection was already lost before "connection reset by peer" is seen

[White Stripes]

forgot to add a possible solution to your problem...

if you are on dialup (hopefully a 56k modem) set the outgoing bandwidth throttle to 2000... that might clear things up.... if this is not the case please post more info about your configuration....

[SamSeeSam]

Peer is the person you are downloading from, the person who is uploading to you.
What that basicially means is that that person has cancelled your download, or has shut winmx, so that he is no longer connected to the winmx network.
it does not happen very frequently and should be ignored the few times that it does

Cheers