# Random high connection latency when searching during high write activity

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/random-high-connection-latency-when-searching-during-high-write-activity/358510>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [April 30, 2024, 6:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/random-high-connection-latency-when-searching-during-high-write-activity/358510 "2024-04-30T18:15:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dpitchford](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dpitchford/32/113171_2.png) [@dpitchford](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dpitchford)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2024, 6:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/random-high-connection-latency-when-searching-during-high-write-activity/358510/1 "2024-04-30T18:15:33Z")

</div>

ES version: 7.17.20

While a separate process is performing writes on an index, I'm observing wildly varying connection latency when performing a search on the index. A search (performed via cURL) on the index took 140 seconds, then 40 minutes later the same search completed almost instantly. When I was trying the search via the Python client, I was getting this error unless I set the Elasticsearch client's timeout to several minutes or more: `elasticsearch.exceptions.ConnectionTimeout: ConnectionTimeout caused by - ReadTimeoutError(HTTPConnectionPool(host='elasticsearch-master', port=9200): Read timed out. (read timeout=60))`

What could account for the wildly varying connection latency when searching this index?