Timeout (network technology)

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The timeout denotes either in programming and network technology

• the length of time that an operation can take before it is aborted with an error, or
• the error itself that is triggered after the timeout .

This ambiguity does not exist in German, here a distinction is made between time limit and time overrun .

application

Time restrictions are particularly useful if you want to avoid a process waiting for something that never occurs or only occurs very late. With regard to process synchronization , a timeout is the period of time for which a condition should be waited for before an error is triggered. In relation to computer networks in particular , timeouts refer to the time that is waited for a response before a data packet is considered lost and either has to be transmitted again (retry) or communication is aborted with a (timeout) error.

Time base

The timeout does not necessarily have to refer to a real-time clock ; it can also be based on another counter . For example, some network protocols restrict how often a data packet can be forwarded (see routing ). The Internet Protocol has for example in the header area of a field called TTL ( Time to live , German as: "to live time remaining life"), in which an initially fixed number (for IPv4 usually a multiple of 32) of each router lowered until the packet is finally deleted if the TTL value reaches zero. This ensures that packets are not sent on forever, but are deleted at some point, especially if the packets run in a circle due to incorrect configuration (routing loop). The original idea was to implement a real time window, but this was rejected due to the lack of time synchronization among the routers.