You can specify how long to wait when connecting to other servers.

Connection Time  You can specify how long to wait when trying to establish a connection with a Web site or server by adjusting the number of seconds to wait for a connection time-out. By default, the wait time is 20 seconds. When specifying the wait time, consider the following:

• If a wait time setting is too high (greater than two minutes), Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 spends a significant amount of time waiting while trying to crawl nonexistent sites, bad links, or servers that are unavailable.
• If the wait time setting is too low (less than 10 seconds), a lot of content is not included in the full-text index because SharePoint Portal Server bypasses the busier servers.
• If, during full-text index creation, SharePoint Portal Server encounters 32 consecutive time-outs related to one server, SharePoint Portal Server designates the server as unavailable and does not process any requests to that server for the next 10 minutes. SharePoint Portal Server records an access error in the gatherer log.
• If you are crawling Microsoft Exchange public folders, the wait time must be greater than 10 seconds. The recommended wait time is 60 seconds.

Request Acknowledgment  You can specify how long to wait for a requested Web page or file by adjusting the number of seconds to wait for request acknowledgment. By default, the wait time is 20 seconds. Specifying a wait time of less than 10 seconds would be low, resulting in fewer documents included in the index. Specifying a wait time of two minutes would be high and could result in longer indexing times.

Specify time-out settings for search

1. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration for Server server_name page, in the Component Configuration section, click Manage the Search Service.
2. On the Manage the Search Service for SharePoint Portal Server page, in the Servers and Topology section, click the server name.
3. On the Search Server Settings page, in the Time Outs section, do the following:
   1. In the Connection time box, type the number of seconds that you want SharePoint Portal Server to wait to connect to a Web site or server before timing out.
   2. In the Request acknowledgement time box, type the number of seconds you want SharePoint Portal Server to wait for a requested Web page or document before timing out.
4. Click Apply.