JMXMP connector client should have a property, say com.sun.jmx.remote.connection.timeout, that controls the timeout when the TCP connection is established. Alternatively, this property could be standardized as jmx.remote.connection.timeout. It should be a string-valued property that specifies the timeout in seconds.

Because the ability to specify a per-connection timeout was only introduced in J2SE 1.4, we will need to use reflection to ensure that the code still compiles and works on J2SE 1.3. Connection timeouts will not be available there. (A property java.net.connectiontimeout was introduced in JDK 1.3.1 but seems to have disappeared again in JDK 1.4, and anyway it applied to all connections, so I don't think we should try to use it.)

I cannot see any way to get the same functionality with the RMI connector.