The invention provides techniques for dynamic timeout including the steps of receiving a request from a requestor; determining whether an interim message should be sent to the requestor; and, if the interim message should be sent to the requestor, sending to the requestor the interim message referring to the request. Techniques are also provided for dynamic timeout including steps of sending a request to a server; receiving an interim message from the server, where the interim message contains one or more response-related items; and determining whether to change a timeout value based on the one or more response-related items in the interim message.