diff --git a/plugins/http/http_request_time b/plugins/http/http_request_time
index 8ecd774d..2f9d3a5c 100755
--- a/plugins/http/http_request_time
+++ b/plugins/http/http_request_time
@@ -56,6 +56,9 @@ if (! eval "require LWP::UserAgent;")
 
 my %URLS;
 
+# timeout in seconds for requests
+my $timeout = $ENV{'timeout'} || 15;
+
 for (my $i = 1; $ENV{"url$i"}; $i++)
 {
 	my $url   = $ENV{"url$i"};
@@ -79,7 +82,7 @@ if ( defined $ARGV[0] and $ARGV[0] eq "autoconf" )
 		exit 0;
 	}
 
-	my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(timeout => 30);
+	my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(timeout => $timeout);
 
 	foreach my $url (keys %URLS) {
 		my $response = $ua->request(HTTP::Request->new('GET',$url));
@@ -132,7 +135,7 @@ if ( defined $ARGV[0] and $ARGV[0] eq "config" )
 	exit 0;
 }
 
-my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(timeout => 15);
+my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(timeout => $timeout);
 foreach my $name (keys %URLS) {
 	my $url = $URLS{$name};