Question: I am using xmlrpclib.ServerProxy to make RPC calls to a remote server. If there is not a network connection to the server it takes the default 10 seconds to return a socket.gaierror to my program. 

This is annoying when doing development without a network connection, or if the remote server is down. Is there a way to update the timeout on my ServerProxy object?

I can't see a clear way to get access to the socket to update it.

Answer: 
An more straightforward solution is at:
<http://www.devpicayune.com/entry/200609191448>

```
import xmlrpclib 
import socket

x = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http:1.2.3.4')  
socket.setdefaulttimeout(10)        #set the timeout to 10 seconds 
x.func_name(args)                   #times out after 10 seconds
socket.setdefaulttimeout(None)      #sets the default back

```
Based on the one from antonylesuisse, but works on Python 2.7.5, resolving the problem:`AttributeError: TimeoutHTTP instance has no attribute 'getresponse'`

```
class TimeoutHTTP(httplib.HTTP):
    def __init__(self, host='', port=None, strict=None,
                timeout=socket._GLOBAL_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT):
        if port == 0:
            port = None
        self._setup(self._connection_class(host, port, strict, timeout))

    def getresponse(self, *args, **kw):
        return self._conn.getresponse(*args, **kw)

class TimeoutTransport(xmlrpclib.Transport):
    def __init__(self,  timeout=socket._GLOBAL_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT, *l, **kw):
        xmlrpclib.Transport.__init__(self, *l, **kw)
        self.timeout=timeout

    def make_connection(self, host):
        host, extra_headers, x509 = self.get_host_info(host)
        conn = TimeoutHTTP(host, timeout=self.timeout)
        return conn

class TimeoutServerProxy(xmlrpclib.ServerProxy):
    def __init__(self, uri, timeout= socket._GLOBAL_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT, *l, **kw):
        kw['transport']=TimeoutTransport(timeout=timeout, use_datetime=kw.get('use_datetime',0))
        xmlrpclib.ServerProxy.__init__(self, uri, *l, **kw)

proxy = TimeoutServerProxy('http://127.0.0.1:1989', timeout=30)
print proxy.test_connection()

```