I have some code that interacts with numerous network elements. I want to set up a variable timeout for these interactions, so that timeout is automatically increased when I am interacting with network elements that have high latency, and decreased for the reverse..... is this possible?

I imagine that I could ping the element before actually connecting to it, and then adjust the timeout value according to the results. However, it would be better if I could somehow measure the amount of time it takes to get back a login prompt when I first try to connect, then use that data to control how long I wait for a datastream to be returned to me after I issue a command to the element. Is it possible to set up some kind of timer for this situation?

My only other option is to set the timeout value to be so large that I never fail to receive data.