Connection and connection request timeout

Question

I am using Http Apache Components to perform the http interactions. I need to adjust my http client. For this purpose I have two parameters: connection timeout and connection request timeout. In library documentation and in source code(no comments were found) I didn't found definition of this terms. I need to know what do they exactly mean. May be they were defined in HTTP protocol documentation but I can't find it. So, my question is what do this two terms mean and how they distinct from each other.

Answer 1

HttpClient has a way to set connection and socket timeout (setConnectionTimeout() and setTimeout()) according to the HttpClient javadocs.

Connection timeout is the timeout until a connection with the server is established.

Socket timeout is the timeout to receive data (socket timeout).

Example:

Let's say you point your browser to access a web page. If the server does not anwser in X seconds, a connection timeout will occur. But if it establishes the connection, then the server will start to process the result for the browser. If it does not ends this processing in Y seconds, a socket timeout will occur.