Consider load balancers that redirect requests to any other server if one of them is taking too much to respond (no matter whether it's slow or gone altogether)

Consider load balancers that redirect requests to any other server if one of them is taking too much to respond (no matter whether it's slow or gone altogether). Eliminating timeouts there and pushing the problem waaaay back onto the client side, with the user constantly hovering over "cancel" or "retry" button, would actually lead to worse user experience. Imagine pressing "refresh" in you browser every now and then on random internet pages just because they occasionally take soooo much more time to load! (Also, unlike in typical client-side software, timeouts on the server side are often configurable, so that software can better fit in a variety of environments and/or requirements.)