1207537 - Shorter default timeout for HTTP proxies

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1230803

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, defect)

Description

[Daniel Stenberg [:bagder]]

A common scenario:

1. User has a VPN running and uses Firefox with a PAC URL within the VPN network identifying a proxy to use.

2. User disconnects VPN but Firefox is still running and now user wants to visit a public web site.

3. The PAC URL no longer works and the proxy returned by the PAC script doesn't work either. It then takes a long time for Firefox to give up attempting to reach the proxy (up to 90 seconds which is the default timeout).

4. After the timeout, Firefox automatically switches to DIRECT and everything is good from that point on.

Yes, we can argue that this is a bad config as then it configures a proxy/pac that no longer exists. It is still a setup and issue I've seen more than one user experience and I want to improve how Firefox deals with it.

Therefor, I want to provide a shorter default timeout for connections that are specifically done to reach a specified proxy. My reasoning here is that proxies are MUCH more likely to actually be within a reasonable network distance and something like 10-15 second could probably be enough for a large majority of proxy users, and that would greatly reduce the pain for the users who run setups as described above.