diff --git a/check_apache_requests b/check_apache_requests
index 89ba184d2269f6ba4f6f44477695ee374e012cd2..292c6ae8c3cc1ab147879afe32b2566796f9ed8b 100755
--- a/check_apache_requests
+++ b/check_apache_requests
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
 # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 # 2020-04-09  v1.0  <axel.hahn@iml.unibe.ch>
 # 2021-03-11  v1.1  <axel.hahn@iml.unibe.ch>  more error checks for output data
+# 2021-11-18  v1.2  <axel.hahn@iml.unibe.ch>  add timeout and max tries
 # ======================================================================
 
 . `dirname $0`/inc_pluginfunctions
@@ -26,6 +27,10 @@ typeset -i iIdle=0
 typeset -i iUnused=0
 typeset -i iUsage=0
 
+paramsWget="-T 5 -t 1 --no-check-certificate"
+#            ^    ^
+#            |    tries = 1
+#            timeout in seconds
 
 # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 # pre checks
@@ -37,10 +42,10 @@ ph.require wget
 # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 # --- get /server-status page
-wget --no-check-certificate -O $tmpfile $url 2>/dev/null
+wget $paramsWget -O $tmpfile $url 2>/dev/null
 if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
     rm -f $tmpfile
-    ph.abort "UNKNOWN: request to url $url failed. `wget --no-check-certificate -O - -S $url`"
+    ph.abort "UNKNOWN: request to url $url failed. `wget $paramsWget --no-check-certificate -O - -S $url 2>&1`"
 fi
 
 # set default / override from command line params