rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12)

Question

I'm trying to do an rsync to transfer 500GB of files from one server to another. I use this command;

rsync -vrPt -e 'ssh -p 2222' [email protected]:/folder /newfolder

It works and syncs just fine for about 10/15 minutes, then it throws this error every time;

rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (5321016884 bytes received so far) [receiver] rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 4 bytes to socket [generator]: Broken pipe (32) rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(1525) [generator=3.0.6] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(600) [receiver=3.0.6]

What could the problem be?

Answer 1

It looks like it is a router timing out the NAT table entry. (I assume one of the servers is on a DSL link.)

Or it could be this: "An idle connection caused a router or remote-shell server to close the connection." from http://rsync.samba.org/issues.html