"When used as a failure detector, timeouts are just a guess that something is wrong."
I send a packet over the network. I configured the timeout to be 10 seconds. 10 seconds passes. Is the packet truly lost? Or, maybe the packet was received, processed, and and a response is on the way back, but it takes 20 seconds instead of 10! Or maybe it takes an hour instead of 20 seconds. Or a decade.
We don't know if the packet is truly lost or is just taking >$timeout_timer and making assumptions is dangerous.
I send a packet over the network. I configured the timeout to be 10 seconds. 10 seconds passes. Is the packet truly lost? Or, maybe the packet was received, processed, and and a response is on the way back, but it takes 20 seconds instead of 10! Or maybe it takes an hour instead of 20 seconds. Or a decade.
We don't know if the packet is truly lost or is just taking >$timeout_timer and making assumptions is dangerous.