What causes "Network request timed out" in GopeedLab/gopeed?

Retry the request — timeouts are frequently transient

Network request timed out

Error message

Network request timed out

What it means

After reqBuilder.Send() fails, the injected fetch implementation checks errorsAsTimeout: if the error implements net.Error with Timeout() true (or unwraps to one), it reports 'Network request timed out' without the underlying detail. It means the HTTP request was aborted by a deadline, not refused or reset.

Source

Thrown at pkg/download/engine/inject/stream/module.go:760

	}
	client.SetRedirectPolicy(func(req *http.Request, via []*http.Request) error {
		switch reqMeta.Redirect {
		case "manual":
			return http.ErrUseLastResponse
		case "error":
			return fmt.Errorf("redirect failed")
		default:
			if len(via) > 20 {
				return fmt.Errorf("too many redirects")
			}
			return nil
		}
	})
	resp, err := reqBuilder.Send(reqMeta.Method, reqMeta.URL)
	if err != nil {
		var ne net.Error
		if errorsAsTimeout(err, &ne) {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("Network request timed out")
		}
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("Network request failed: %w", err)
	}
	id := fmt.Sprintf("%d", time.Now().UnixNano())
	meta := &fetchOpenMeta{
		ID:         id,
		Status:     resp.StatusCode,
		StatusText: resp.Status,
		URL:        reqMeta.URL,
	}
	if resp.Response != nil && resp.Response.Request != nil && resp.Response.Request.URL != nil {
		responseURL := *resp.Response.Request.URL
		responseURL.Fragment = ""
		meta.URL = responseURL.String()
	}
	for key, values := range resp.Header {
		meta.Headers = append(meta.Headers, [2]string{key, strings.Join(values, ", ")})
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 7b7327ffb3)

Solutions

Retry the request — timeouts are frequently transient
Check/disable the configured proxy to rule out a stalling middlebox
Test the same URL with curl to confirm the server is genuinely slow, and prefer a faster mirror if so

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Try / catch

async function fetchWithRetry(url, attempts = 3) {
  for (let i = 0; i < attempts; i++) {
    try {
      return await fetch(url);
    } catch (e) {
      if (String(e).includes('Network request timed out') && i < attempts - 1) {
        await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 500 * (i + 1)));
        continue;
      }
      throw e;
    }
  }
}

Prevention

Retry timeouts with linear/exponential backoff before surfacing them to the user
Verify proxy health when timeouts cluster across many hosts
Prefer HEAD probes for resolve logic to cut time-to-timeout on slow servers

When it happens

Trigger: Server accepting the connection but responding slower than the request timeout; a stalled proxy or VPN that stops forwarding bytes; DNS/CONNECT phases exceeding the client timeout during gopeed.fetch().

Common situations: Slow CDNs or rate-limited hosts during resolve; mobile/edge networks with high latency; a proxy configured in downloader settings that hangs; large HEAD requests to servers that compute metadata on demand.

Understand the failure class

Timeouts: ETIMEDOUT, deadlines, and hung requests — what actually expires when a request times out.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of GopeedLab/gopeed@7b7327ffb3 (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f029a676319f47ea. Report an issue: GitHub.