The timeout can’t realistically be set very short, since it needs to allow for a normal reboot of a server. Servers are, in my experience, notoriously slow to

The timeout can’t realistically be set very short, since it needs to allow for a normal reboot of a server. Servers are, in my experience, notoriously slow to reboot. Therefore, a typical network hiccup is assumed to be shorter than that. The default timeout value of 5 minutes reflects this. Also, you could add the Mandos server status to your alerting system, and if anything goes wrong with your network and the Mandos server times out for a client, you can be alerted to this fact, so you can fix it before the next time that client happens to reboot. > consider how you'd answer the FAQ "So I should set my timeouts super low for better security?" Fair; the text could be clearer about this. > I'm curious about what you mean by saying you aren't using "x509 keys" though. Well, we aren’t using TLS with X.509 keys. We are using TLS with Raw Public Keys, as specified by RFC 7250 (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7250.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7250.html) and supported by GnuTLS: https://www.gnutls.org/manual/gnutls.html#Raw-public_002dkeys https://www.gnutls.org/manual/gnutls.html#Raw-public_002dkey...