What Is a Timeout Policy?
A timeout policy defines how long a proxy or mesh will wait for a service to respond before aborting the request and returning a failure. It caps the time any single call can consume, freeing resources and surfacing slowness as a clear error. Timeouts are often paired with retries and circuit breaking.
Why it matters
Without timeouts, a single hung backend can tie up callers indefinitely and exhaust connections. A well-set timeout turns silent stalls into fast, observable failures.
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