# Discovery.ec2.ping\_timeout **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [January 5, 2013, 2:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/discovery-ec2-ping-timeout/10231 "2013-01-05T02:56:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Eric\_Jain](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/eric_jain/32/834_2.png) [@Eric\_Jain](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Eric_Jain)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2013, 2:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/discovery-ec2-ping-timeout/10231/1 "2013-01-05T02:56:13Z")
I just increased discovery.ec2.ping\_timeout to 15s to avoid the split brain situations I was getting ever so often, but according to [1] high ping\_timeout values _increase_ the risk "that a new node’s discovery phase will end before it has found the cluster". Isn't the purpose of increasing the ping\_timeout to avoid that? [1] [http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/modules/discovery/ec2.html](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/modules/discovery/ec2.html) -- ---
**Author:** ![Karel\_Minarik\_2](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/karel_minarik_2/32/1078_2.png) [@Karel\_Minarik\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Karel_Minarik_2)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 7:19am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/discovery-ec2-ping-timeout/10231/2 "2013-01-06T07:19:19Z")
Your original understanding is correct: `discovery.ec2.ping_timeout` prevents and decreases the possibility that a node will leave the cluster (due to noisy network, too many EC2 nodes, etc). The sentence advices you to use tags (and/or security groups) for AWS deployments with many, many other EC2 instances. Elasticsearch is able to filter the nodes more effectively then. Karel On Saturday, January 5, 2013 3:56:13 AM UTC+1, Eric Jain wrote: > I just increased discovery.ec2.ping\_timeout to 15s to avoid the split > brain situations I was getting ever so often, but according to [1] high > ping\_timeout values _increase_ the risk "that a new node’s discovery phase > will end before it has found the cluster". Isn't the purpose of increasing > the ping\_timeout to avoid that? > > [1] > [Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale | Elastic](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/modules/discovery/ec2.html) -- ---
**Author:** ![Eric\_Jain](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/eric_jain/32/834_2.png) [@Eric\_Jain](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Eric_Jain)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 7:36am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/discovery-ec2-ping-timeout/10231/3 "2013-01-06T07:36:32Z")
On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 11:19 PM, Karel Minařík [karel.minarik@elasticsearch.com](mailto:karel.minarik@elasticsearch.com) wrote: > The sentence advices you to use tags (and/or security groups) for AWS > deployments with many, many other EC2 instances. Elasticsearch is able to > filter the nodes more effectively then. Thanks for the clarification. So shouldn't the docs read "(particularly with _low_ ping\_timeout values)"? -- ---
**Author:** ![Karel\_Minarik\_2](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/karel_minarik_2/32/1078_2.png) [@Karel\_Minarik\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Karel_Minarik_2)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2013, 7:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/discovery-ec2-ping-timeout/10231/4 "2013-01-06T07:42:22Z")
> Thanks for the clarification. So shouldn't the docs read > "(particularly with _low_ ping\_timeout values)"? Quite possibly! 🙂 -- ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 2:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/discovery-ec2-ping-timeout/10231/5 "2017-07-06T02:57:43Z")