Timeout (computing)

The timeout called in programming and network technology either

• The period of time that may take a process to complete before it is aborted with an error, or
• The error itself, which is triggered after the timeout.

This ambiguity does not exist in German, here is a distinction between time limits and timeout.

Application

Time constraints are particularly useful if you want to avoid that a process is waiting for something that never occurs or until very late. In terms of process synchronization, a timeout is the amount of time to wait on the occurrence of a condition before an error is raised. Especially in relation to computer networks call timeout the time to wait for a response before a data packet is lost and either needs to be transferred again ( retry ), or to communicate with a (timeout ) error is aborted.

Time base

The timeout does not necessarily refer to a real time clock, it can also be based on another counter. Some network protocols, for example, restrict the number of times a data packet may be forwarded (see routing). The Internet Protocol has for example in the header area of ​​a field called TTL (time to live, German about: to live time, lifetime), in which an initially fixed number ( in IPv4, usually a multiple of 32 ) is reduced by each router until the packet is finally cleared if the TTL reaches zero. Thus, to ensure that packets are not sent on forever, but will eventually be deleted, which increases the efficiency of the Internet. The original sense was also a time window that lack of time synchronization but ended up among the routers that provide each router that number decremented ( lower by at least 1 ).

• Computer Networks
• Programming