> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.tumbler.app/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.tumbler.app/after-first-launch/reliability-and-timeouts.md).

# Reliability and timeouts

## Who this is for

Providers who want stable subscription delivery and predictable responses.

## What you can do

* Configure timeouts and retries.
* Define availability SLA for the subscription URL.
* Remove unavailable nodes from the subscription correctly.

## Examples

* Response timeout <= 2 seconds.
* Retries with backoff 0.5s, 1s, 2s for temporary errors.
* Stable `ETag` so the backend does not re-download an unchanged body.

## See also

* [operations/caching-and-304.md](/after-first-launch/caching-and-304.md)
* [features/basic-limits.md](/features/basic-limits.md)
* [troubleshooting/common-issues.md](/getting-started/common-issues.md)

## Timeouts

* For origin: keep internal body generation timeout under 1 second, total HTTP up to 2 seconds.
* For clients: recommended `connect_timeout` <= 500 ms and total `read_timeout` <= 3 seconds.

## Retries

* Allow idempotent `GET` requests with exponential backoff.
* For `5xx` and network errors, 2-3 retries are acceptable.
* Do not change the body between retries unless the subscription actually changed.

## Degradations

* During planned maintenance, remove affected nodes in advance or move them lower in the output order.
* During partial incidents, update the VLESS/Xray/sing-box outbound list and `ETag`; do not leave broken records.
* If you change node order to work around degradation, treat it as a meaningful subscription change.


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