Hello everybody, maybe somebody can help me with this one: I wrote a prog which fetches pages from the web with multiple threads. However, the URLs given sometimes cause a network timeout: #<Errno::ETIMEDOUT: Die Wartezeit f die Verbindung ist abgelaufen - "connect(2)"> (German for: connection timeout) But this error only appears after a long pause, where all other threads are blocked as well. So I thought I use the timeout library and only wait for some shorter time and continue with the next URL if I don't get response fast enough. This may work in a single threaded app, but not really with multiple threads: The threads don't really get the time they're supposed to have. Anyway, how would I avoid blocking threads because of network timeouts while guaranteeing each thread enough time to fulfill its task? So long Arno Erpenbeck BTW: Praise for Ruby: I've never met a language where you get productive so fast!