The VerifierServlet code currently causes PrudentHttpEntityResolver to be called with hard-coded values of 5 seconds (5000ms) set for both the connectionTimeout and socketTimeout params. I notice a lot of cases of v.nu failing to be able check sites because those timeouts are too short (e.g., http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20091208). So it would seem to be useful to make those timeouts configurable through Java system properties -- nu.validator.servlet.connectionTimeout and nu.validator.servlet.socketTimeout, I guess -- rather than hard-coding them.