how best to handle httplib timeouts ?

[Skip Montanaro]

    rich> I'm trying to write an app to monitor an IIS server, .... what is
    rich> the best way to handle this ?

Off-topic response perhaps, but if you want to monitor services running on
remote machines, you should see what's already available.  I use Nagios,
<http://www.nagios.org/>, and find it excellent for the purpose (a bit
complex to get started with, but very robust).

Skip