Connecting to Peers#
Connecting to a peer is done by sending a version
message, which contains your version number, block, and current time to the remote node. The remote node responds with its own version
message. Then both nodes send a verack
message to the other node to indicate the connection has been established.
Once connected, the client can send to the remote node getaddr
and addr
messages to gather additional peers.
In order to maintain a connection with a peer, nodes by default will send a message to peers before 30 minutes of inactivity. If 90 minutes pass without a message being received by a peer, the client will assume that connection has closed.