The socket adapter allows one to set a timeout, which affects both the connection and the reading of data from the server. Currently, if a timeout occurs during read, there are no checks to handle it and no exception is thrown. In fact, what will probably happen in case of a slow running script on the server side is you'll get the Client to wait twice the time of the timeout (because there are at least two read attempts) and then a Zend_Http_Response exception is thrown.

Instead, a Zend_Http_Client_Adapter_Exception should be thrown, indicating a timeout.