Help Center/ Elastic Load Balance/ FAQs/ Listeners/ What Are the Three Timeouts of a Listener?
Updated on 2026-11-05 GMT+08:00

What Are the Three Timeouts of a Listener?

Table 1 lists the timeout durations of listeners at both Layer 4 and Layer 7.

  • For shared load balancers, you can configure and modify the timeout durations for TCP, HTTP, and HTTPS listeners.
  • For dedicated load balancers, you can configure and modify the timeout durations for TCP, UDP, HTTP, and HTTPS listeners.
Figure 1 Timeout durations at Layer 7
Figure 2 Timeout durations at Layer 4
Table 1 Timeout durations

Protocol

Type

Description

Value Range

TCP/UDP/TLS

Idle Timeout (keepalive_timeout)

Specifies the maximum duration during which no data is transferred between the load balancer and a client. If no data is transmitted during this period, the load balancer closes the connection and establishes a new one when the next request is received.

10s to 4000s

HTTP/HTTPS/QUIC

Idle Timeout (keepalive_timeout)

Specifies the maximum duration during which no data is transferred between the load balancer and a client. If no data is transmitted during this period, the load balancer closes the connection and establishes a new one when the next request is received.

HTTP/HTTPS:0~4000s

QUIC:10~4000s

Request Timeout (client_timeout)

Specifies how long the load balancer waits for a client request. It includes:
  • The timeout duration for the load balancer to read the request header from the client. If the client does not send a complete request header within this duration, the request is interrupted.
  • The maximum interval between two consecutive requests received by the load balancer.

1s to 300s

Response Timeout (member_timeout)

Specifies how long the load balancer waits for a response from a backend server. If the backend server does not respond within the configured timeout, the load balancer retries the request on another backend server. If no backend server responds, the load balancer stops waiting and returns the HTTP 504 error code.

If sticky session is enabled and the load balancer receives no response from the backend server within the response timeout duration, the load balancer does not retry the request and returns the HTTP 504 error code directly.

NOTE:

If sticky session is enabled and the load balancer receives no response from the backend server within the response timeout duration, the load balancer returns a 504 Gateway Timeout error to the client directly.

1s to 300s