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

```
The following example works with Python 2.7.4.

```
import xmlrpclib
from xmlrpclib import *
import httplib

def Server(url, *args, **kwargs):
    t = TimeoutTransport(kwargs.get('timeout', 20))
    if 'timeout' in kwargs:
       del kwargs['timeout']
    kwargs['transport'] = t
    server = xmlrpclib.Server(url, *args, **kwargs)
    return server

TimeoutServerProxy = Server

class TimeoutTransport(xmlrpclib.Transport):

    def __init__(self, timeout, use_datetime=0):
        self.timeout = timeout
        return xmlrpclib.Transport.__init__(self, use_datetime)

    def make_connection(self, host):
        conn = xmlrpclib.Transport.make_connection(self, host)
        conn.timeout = self.timeout
        return connrpclib.Server(url, *args, **kwargs)

```