How to set connection and read timeouts in wget

HTTP and HTTPS transfers over unreliable networks can remain stuck for long periods when remote servers, proxies, or network paths fail in subtle ways, causing automation and interactive sessions to stall. Explicit timeouts in wget prevent jobs from hanging indefinitely and allow monitoring systems to react when downloads stop making progress. Consistent timeout behaviour is especially important in batch jobs, configuration management tools, and container entrypoints that depend on predictable failure modes.

The wget client exposes multiple timers for network operations, including DNS resolution, TCP connection establishment, and idle time between received data blocks. Command-line options such as –timeout, –connect-timeout, and –read-timeout adjust these limits per invocation, while configuration directives in /home/$USER/.wgetrc provide persistent defaults. Combining specific per-command flags with sane configuration values yields a flexible baseline that adapts to links of different quality without changing scripts for every call.

Timeouts that are too aggressive cause intermittent failures on high-latency or congested networks, while overly generous limits leave processes waiting for endpoints that are effectively unreachable. Selecting values that match real-world conditions for the environment reduces false alarms without hiding genuine outages. Before tightening settings in production, testing with representative services and paths helps confirm that chosen thresholds handle transient slowdowns without masking persistent problems.

1. Open a terminal on Linux with a regular user shell.

   $ whoami
   user

   Wget reads user-specific defaults from /home/$USER/.wgetrc, so a non-root shell keeps timeout configuration scoped to that account.

2. Display the timeout-related options supported by wget to understand the available controls.

   $ wget --help | grep -i timeout
          --timeout=SECONDS           set all network timeouts to SECONDS
          --dns-timeout=SECS         set the DNS lookup timeout
          --connect-timeout=SECS     set the connect timeout
          --read-timeout=SECS        set the read timeout
   ##### snipped #####

   The generic –timeout option caps overall waiting time for DNS, connection, and read operations unless more specific per-phase timeouts are provided.

3. Run a download with a combined network timeout using –timeout to cap all network operations for a single invocation.

   $ wget --timeout=20 https://example.com/archive.tar.gz
   --2025-12-08 12:00:00--  https://example.com/archive.tar.gz
   Resolving example.com (example.com)... 93.184.216.34
   Connecting to example.com (example.com)|93.184.216.34|:443... connected.
   HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
   Length: 52428800 (50M) [application/x-tar]
   Saving to: ‘archive.tar.gz’
   ##### snipped #####

   A moderate –timeout value ensures that prolonged stalls at any stage of the transfer cause a clean failure instead of an indefinitely blocked process.

4. Run a download with separate connection and read timeouts to distinguish slow handshakes from slow data transfer.

   $ wget --connect-timeout=5 --read-timeout=30 https://example.com/large.iso
   --2025-12-08 12:05:00--  https://example.com/large.iso
   Resolving example.com (example.com)... 93.184.216.34
   Connecting to example.com (example.com)|93.184.216.34|:443... connected.
   HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
   Length: 1073741824 (1.0G) [application/octet-stream]
   Saving to: ‘large.iso’
   ##### snipped #####

   The –connect-timeout value limits how long establishing the TCP or TLS session can take, while –read-timeout controls the idle gap tolerated between received data chunks once the transfer has started.

5. Add persistent timeout defaults for the current account in /home/$USER/.wgetrc so new invocations inherit the chosen values.

   $ printf 'timeout = 20\nconnect_timeout = 5\nread_timeout = 30\n' >> ~/.wgetrc

   Timeouts that are too small for real network conditions can cause routine downloads to fail repeatedly, while excessively large values may leave unattended jobs blocked for many minutes during outages.

6. Verify the behaviour by targeting an address that never responds and confirming that wget aborts close to the configured connection timeout instead of hanging indefinitely.

   $ wget --connect-timeout=5 --read-timeout=5 http://10.255.255.1/
   --2025-12-08 12:10:00--  http://10.255.255.1/
   Connecting to 10.255.255.1:80... failed: Connection timed out.

   Consistent timeout messages and fast exit codes from scripted wget calls indicate that connection and read limits are active and preventing long-running hangs.