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.