How do I configure timeouts?

    Attention

    This is not an exhaustive list of all of the configurable timeouts that Envoy supports. Depending on the deployment additional configuration may be required.

    Connection timeouts apply to the entire HTTP connection and all streams the connection carries.

    • The HTTP protocol idle timeout is defined in a generic message used by both the HTTP connection manager as well as upstream cluster HTTP connections. The idle timeout is the time at which a downstream or upstream connection will be terminated if there are no active streams. The default idle timeout if not otherwise specified is 1 hour. To modify the idle timeout for downstream connections use the field in the HTTP connection manager configuration. To modify the idle timeout for upstream connections use the common_http_protocol_options field in the cluster configuration.

    Stream timeouts apply to individual streams carried by an HTTP connection. Note that a stream is an HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 concept, however internally Envoy maps HTTP/1 requests to streams so in this context request/stream is interchangeable.

    • The HTTP connection manager is the amount of time the connection manager will allow for the entire request stream to be received from the client.

      Attention

    • The HTTP connection manager stream_idle_timeout is the amount of time that the connection manager will allow a stream to exist with no upstream or downstream activity. The default stream idle timeout is 5 minutes. This timeout is strongly recommended for streaming APIs (requests or responses that never end).

    • The HTTP protocol is defined in a generic message used by the HTTP connection manager. The max stream duration is the maximum time that a stream’s lifetime will span. You can use this functionality when you want to reset HTTP request/response streams periodically. You can’t use request_timeout in this situation because this timer will be disarmed if a response header is received on the request/response streams.

      Attention

      The current implementation implements this timeout on downstream connections only.

    Envoy supports additional stream timeouts at the route level, as well as overriding some of the stream timeouts already introduced above.

    • The route allows overriding of the HTTP connection manager stream_idle_timeout and does the same thing.

    • The route can be configured when using retries so that individual tries using a shorter timeout than the overall request timeout described above. This timeout only applies before any part of the response is sent to the downstream, which normally happens after the upstream has sent response headers. This timeout can be used with streaming endpoints to retry if the upstream fails to begin a response within the timeout.

    TCP

    • The cluster specifies the amount of time Envoy will wait for an upstream TCP connection to be established. This timeout has no default, but is required in the configuration.

      Attention

      For TLS connections, the connect timeout includes the TLS handshake.