Difference between Socket.connect(Adreess,timeout) and FTPClient.setSoTimeOu

Question

We are doing FTP connection through our applicaion which is a JAVA aplication. We have set timeout for connection using Socket.connect(Adreess,timeout) method before calling FTPClient.connect() method.

During retriving files from the FTP site under same connection we havent set any timeout. Is it mandatory to call method FTPClient.setSoTimeOut(timeout) method to set individual time out for each such interaction under same connection or Socket.connect(Adreess,timeout) method will set timeout for each interaction with FTP site under one connection?

I would also like to know What is the difference between these two methods?

Answer 1

The timeout in Socket.connect() is connect timeout, which is the time to wait for TCP handshake to finish. This timeout only occurs once per connection.

setSoTimeout() is called socket read timeout, which is how long you wait to read pending bytes from socket. This occurs on every socket read throughout the TCP session.

It's good practice to set both timeout value so you don't rely on system defaults, which may vary. However, the timeout may not work sometimes when the call is stuck in native code. For example, the connect timeout is not honored if firewall silently drops packet.