Question

In WCF, does a timeout on a request-response operation fault the channel at the client’s end?

If a server times out when sending a response, is the channel faulted at the server’s end?

Answer 1

Yes, a timeout will fault the channel – and there’s always only one channel linking a client and a server – the server doesn’t have a channel of its own…

You basically have:

+-----------+                       +-----------+
|           |_______________________|           |
|  Client   |     The Channel       |  Server   |
|           |-----------------------|           |
+-----------+                       +-----------+

There’s really only one channel which connects the two bits. As for timeouts – if both ends define a different value for the same timeout, the smaller value will “win” and become relevant – the higher value (on the other end) isn’t taken into account.