# Version 5.5.1 - timeout not working

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/version-5-5-1-timeout-not-working/119130
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [February 8, 2018, 10:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/version-5-5-1-timeout-not-working/119130 "2018-02-08T22:00:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Eran\_H](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/eran_h/32/46227_2.png) [@Eran\_H](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Eran_H)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2018, 10:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/version-5-5-1-timeout-not-working/119130/1 "2018-02-08T22:00:56Z")

</div>

I would like long queries to kill themselves after ~ 30 seconds, in case of unexpected scenarios of growing load on the server.  
It already happened that my whole cluster was under heavy load with a growing pile of search tasks (by checking `GET _tasks`).

I am testing the timeout parameter like this

```auto
POST index_name/_search?timeout=1nanos
{
  "size": 10000
}

```

but I get in the result:

```auto
{
  "took": 38,
  "timed_out": false,
}

```

I also tried with heavier aggregation that took 10 seconds and it doesn't time out.

1. What does the timeout parameter do?
2. Is there any way to accomplish this?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2018, 10:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/version-5-5-1-timeout-not-working/119130/2 "2018-03-08T22:01:09Z")

</div>

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