This prevents client and server from being sent a SIGPIPE (and terminating) when the other side unexpectedly closes the connection. It's way easier to handle this condition when checking the write() return value, than to do anything smart in a SIGPIPE handler. More details: <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/108183/how-to-prevent-sigpipes-or-handle-them-properly> Change-Id: I1da5bf5ef79c8b7b00ede976e96ed4f1c560049d