Agent Wranglers

Reliability Required

Set timeouts on every call

Give every outgoing and incoming request a time limit. Never wait forever on another service.

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated .

How to do it

Set connect and total timeouts on each HTTP client, database and queue call. Make the server's own limit shorter than the client's, so the client gets a clear answer.

How to check

Point a staging dependency at a server that never answers. The request fails within the set limit with a 504 or 503 problem.

For agents: if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in Based on the Agent Wranglers api design playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/api-design/reliability/timeouts.