Apache HttpClient: setConnectTimeout() vs. setConnectionTimeToLive() vs. setSocketTimeout()

Question

Can someone please explain what is the difference between these two:

client = HttpClientBuilder.create()
    .setConnectionTimeToLive(1, TimeUnit.MINUTES)
    .b         


        

Answer 1

A ConnectTimeout determines the maximum time to wait for the other side to answer "yes, I'm here, let's talk" when creating a new connection (ConnectTimeout eventually calls socket.connect(address, timeout). The wait-time is usually less than a second, unless the other side is really busy with just accepting new incoming connections or you have to go through the great firewall of China. In the latter cases it can be a minute (or more) before the new connection is created. If the connection is not established within the ConnectTimeout, you get an error (1).

setSocketTimeout eventually calls socket.setSoTimeout which is explained in this answer.

The ConnectionTimeToLive determines the maximum age of a connection (after which it will be closed), regardless of when the connection was last used. Normally, there is an "idle timeout" to cleanup connections, i.e. you or the other side will close a connection that is not used for a while. Typically, you will close an idle connection before the other side does to prevent errors. But there are two other cases I can think of where a maximum age for a connection is useful:

• Bad network components: count yourself lucky if you have not met them. Some bad routers, firewalls, proxies, etc. will just drop (actively being used) connections after something like 30 minutes. Since you and the other side may not even be aware that a connection was dropped, you can get "connection reset" errors for no obvious reason at weird times.
• Cached meta-data: most systems keep some meta-data about a connection in some sort of cache. Some systems manage this cache badly - cache size just grows with the age of the connection.

A note about the ConnectionTimeToLive implementation in Apache HttpClient 4.5.4: I think you must use the PoolingHttpClientConnectionManager for the option to work (it eventually all comes down to a call to this isExpired method). If you do not use this connection manager, test the option to make sure it really works.

(1) Interesting comment from EJP on this related answer