Inability to control initial timeout in Socket Factory

Question

Hello,
We have built our own RMI socket factory where we want to control the timeout of the sockets created there. This is our code
    public Socket createSocket(String host, int port) throws IOException {
            Socket socket = new Socket(host, port);
            socket.setSoTimeout(requestTimeout);
            return socket;
    }Due to spurious heavy loads on our server, we need to operate with timeout values up to 100 seconds.
However, we find that it is impossible to control the initial socket creation timeout. We observe this thought the lack of giving the the desired timeout parameter. Thus, the socket times out in the default 10 seconds in this initial call, not waiting the desired 100s before making the exception.
Creating the socket through first creating a default socket and afterwards binding it like this
Socket socket = new Socket();
socket.setSoTimeout(socketTimout);
socket.bind(new InetAddress(host,port));did not seem to do the trick in this setting either (neither did replacing bind with connect).
What is the reason for this shortcoming in the API? Any workarounds?
Best regards,
Helge Fredriksen

Answer 1

You want:
Socket socket = new Socket();
socket.connect(host,port,connectTimeout);
socket.setSoTimeout(readTimeout);
return socket;Socket.setSoTimeout only sets the read timeout. Also be aware that with the timed connect shown above you can usually only reduce the timeout, not increase it, from its default.