From Beej's Guide to Network Programming:
How can I set a custom timeout value for a TCP or UDP socket?
It depends on your system. You might search the net for SO_RCVTIMEO and SO_SNDTIMEO (for use with setsockopt()) to see if your system supports such functionality.
The Linux man page suggests using alarm() or setitimer() as a substitute.
I'm interested in implementing a socket timeout using setitimer(), is there any sample code that does that? Thanks.