Node.js ECONNRESET errors in HTTP requests

Node.js HTTP requests randomly fail with ECONNRESET, especially under load or when calling external APIs. The error is intermittent and hard to reproduce consistently.

ECONNRESET means the server closed the connection before the client finished. Common causes: (1) Keep-alive connections timing out server-side — set agent keepAlive options or disable it. (2) Missing timeout on the request — add timeout: 30000 and handle the timeout event. (3) Connection pool exhaustion — increase maxSockets on the HTTP agent. Fix: use a custom agent with keepAlive: true, keepAliveMsecs: 30000, maxSockets: 50 and always set request timeouts. Wrap calls in retry logic with exponential backoff for external APIs.

TCP connections can be closed by the remote end at any time. Without proper timeout and retry handling, Node's default behavior is to throw an unhandled error.