HTTP client timeout and server timeout

Question

According to this question: Where can I find the default timeout settings for all browsers? each every browser has a default setting for time out

The default timeout in Firefox17, after checking about:config is 115s. However I have tested to run some request in which I timed and it returned a request after >150~ seconds.

So I wonder how does it works, shouldn't Firefox have timed out before?

There's many forms of timeout, are you after the connection timeout, request timeout or time to live (time before TCP connection stops)? — alex.p, Nov 27 '12 at 10:52
that timeout, if occurs, then it returns a timeout on a httprequest. is it not related to the browser timeout setting? — starcorn, Nov 27 '12 at 10:55
Look at this answer http://stackoverflow.com/a/1343963/779408 — Bob, Jan 26 '13 at 05:59

score 39 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 27 '16 at 08:34

39

There's many forms of timeout, are you after the connection timeout, request timeout or time to live (time before TCP connection stops).

The default TimeToLive on Firefox is 115s (network.http.keep-alive.timeout)

The default connection timeout on Firefox is 250s (network.http.connection-retry-timeout)

The default request timeout for Firefox is 30s (network.http.pipelining.read-timeout).

The time it takes to do an HttpRequest depends on if a connection has been made this has to be within 250s which I'm guessing you're not after. You're probably after the request timeout which I think is 30,000ms (30s) so to conclude I'd say it's timing out with a connection time out that's why you got a response back after ~150s though I haven't really tested this.

edited Sep 27 '16 at 08:34

Christophe Roussy

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answered Nov 27 '12 at 10:57

alex.p

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Yep on my default install of Firefox 30,000 is the read timeout (time it takes to retrieve a reply back) although bear in mind I haven't tested whether Firefox obeys this, try changing it. – alex.p Nov 27 '12 at 11:02
@starcorn not sure of the reason why it's so high maybe for very big payloads as it's roughly equal to 8+ hours. – alex.p Nov 27 '12 at 14:19
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what is de difference between connnection timeout and request timeout? – johnlemon Jul 15 '13 at 10:48
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I think the 30,000 should be in ms, which is only 30 seconds. – Daniel Baktiar Nov 14 '13 at 02:29
300s is the default HTTP timeout for Apache anyway. – Marcus Adams Nov 25 '13 at 19:47
What about `network.http.response.timeout`? What's the difference between response timeout and `network.http.pipelining.read-timeout`? – CMCDragonkai Jun 12 '16 at 11:16

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 04 '13 at 22:53

According to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592284, the pref network.http.connection-retry-timeout controls the amount of time in ms (Milliseconds !) to wait for success on the initial connection before beginning the second one. Setting it to 0 disables the parallel connection.

score -9 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 29 '13 at 00:53

-9

go to the url about:config and paste each line:

network.http.keep-alive.timeout;10
network.http.connection-retry-timeout;10
network.http.pipelining.read-timeout;5
network.http.connection-timeout;10

edited Aug 29 '13 at 00:53

SheetJS

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answered Aug 29 '13 at 00:35

user2727388

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This is terrible advice. Please never apply this configuration on Wifi or mobile connections. This would prevent you to display sites when your connection is being flaky or when a site is slowish. – user5994461 Sep 16 '16 at 17:34

HTTP client timeout and server timeout

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