timeout on recv

[verbal]

i make a project where i need to download web pages.
my problem was how would i recv the hole web page. the content length part of the HTTP header isn't always set so it's not a trusted source. if i was receiving while there were bytes coming the recv call would freeze when there where no more bytes until some new traffic come. So i added a timeout of 5sec to recv.
my question is :
is it safe to put the timeout on lower values such as 1 sec or even lower or there is a chance that recv will miss some part of the incoming bytes maybe due to bandwidth difference or any other reason?
Thanx in advance.

[MikeAThon]

It's all a matter of engineering trade-offs. A 1 second time-out might work fine for many systems, and it also might be too fast for many others. You need to experiment, learn the limitations, and make certain that the end-user knows and understands them.

Mike

[verbal]

i made the timeout as a configuration option and let it up to the user (along with some warnings on the documentation and the default value on 5s).
After some tests i ran at random servers i found that there can be a huge gap on the appropriate timeout. some servers where responding very well with a very small timeout and others had problems with the timeout on 10sec or bigger. i didn't expect such a big gap.

[upredsun]

yes,you can set timeout to be less than 1 sec or even less,but it is up to your scenario.