diff --git a/packages/libp2p/src/connection-monitor.ts b/packages/libp2p/src/connection-monitor.ts
index da24eaa04c..51e30a1fa8 100644
--- a/packages/libp2p/src/connection-monitor.ts
+++ b/packages/libp2p/src/connection-monitor.ts
@@ -11,7 +11,14 @@ const PROTOCOL_VERSION = '1.0.0'
 const PROTOCOL_NAME = 'ping'
 const PROTOCOL_PREFIX = 'ipfs'
 const PING_LENGTH = 32
-const DEFAULT_ABORT_CONNECTION_ON_PING_FAILURE = true
+// Probe failures are not reliable evidence a connection is dead under real
+// WAN conditions — trans-continental RTT, event-loop contention, and transient
+// network jitter routinely cause a single 10s ping exchange to fail. Yamux
+// keepalive detects genuinely dead connections at the muxer layer without
+// tearing down the TCP socket, so aborting on a single probe failure is
+// measurable self-harm at non-trivial scale. Applications that want the
+// aggressive behaviour can still opt in by setting this to true.
+const DEFAULT_ABORT_CONNECTION_ON_PING_FAILURE = false
 
 export interface ConnectionMonitorInit {
   /**
@@ -38,9 +45,12 @@ export interface ConnectionMonitorInit {
   pingTimeout?: Omit<AdaptiveTimeoutInit, 'metricsName' | 'metrics'>
 
   /**
-   * If true, any connection that fails the ping will be aborted
+   * If true, any connection that fails the ping will be aborted. Defaults to
+   * false because a single 10s probe failure is not reliable evidence that
+   * the connection is dead under real WAN conditions. Set to true to restore
+   * the previous aggressive behaviour.
    *
-   * @default true
+   * @default false
    */
   abortConnectionOnPingFailure?: boolean
 
diff --git a/packages/libp2p/test/connection-monitor/index.spec.ts b/packages/libp2p/test/connection-monitor/index.spec.ts
index 7fb906a77c..2afdfbac90 100644
--- a/packages/libp2p/test/connection-monitor/index.spec.ts
+++ b/packages/libp2p/test/connection-monitor/index.spec.ts
@@ -112,7 +112,8 @@ describe('connection monitor', () => {
       pingInterval: 50,
       pingTimeout: {
         maxTimeout: 50
-      }
+      },
+      abortConnectionOnPingFailure: true
     })
 
     await start(monitor)
@@ -133,7 +134,8 @@ describe('connection monitor', () => {
 
   it('should abort a connection that fails', async () => {
     monitor = new ConnectionMonitor(components, {
-      pingInterval: 10
+      pingInterval: 10,
+      abortConnectionOnPingFailure: true
     })
 
     await start(monitor)
@@ -150,6 +152,25 @@ describe('connection monitor', () => {
     expect(connection.abort).to.have.property('called', true)
   })
 
+  it('should not abort a connection that fails by default', async () => {
+    monitor = new ConnectionMonitor(components, {
+      pingInterval: 10
+    })
+
+    await start(monitor)
+
+    const connection = stubInterface<Connection>()
+    connection.newStream.withArgs('/ipfs/ping/1.0.0').callsFake(async (protocols, opts) => {
+      throw new ConnectionClosedError('Connection closed')
+    })
+
+    components.connectionManager.getConnections.returns([connection])
+
+    await delay(500)
+
+    expect(connection.abort).to.have.property('called', false)
+  })
+
   it('should not abort a connection that fails when abortConnectionOnPingFailure is false', async () => {
     monitor = new ConnectionMonitor(components, {
       pingInterval: 10,