In wget 1.8 the call wget -t 1 --timeout=3 http://195.49.84.148/
does not time out after 3 seconds because connecting to that IP (currently) hangs. strace output: socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_IP) = 3 connect(3, {sin_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(80), sin_addr=inet_addr("195.49.84.148")}}, 16 <unfinished ...> This is a problem in a script of mine that does live checks regularly: Dead wgets accumulate. Cool if you get around to fix it. -Urban