How do I set the timeout for a JAX-WS webservice client?

The properties in the accepted answer did not work for me, possibly because I'm using the JBoss implementation of JAX-WS?

Using a different set of properties (found in the JBoss JAX-WS User Guide) made it work:

//Set timeout until a connection is established
((BindingProvider)port).getRequestContext().put("javax.xml.ws.client.connectionTimeout", "6000");

//Set timeout until the response is received
((BindingProvider) port).getRequestContext().put("javax.xml.ws.client.receiveTimeout", "1000");

I know this is old and answered elsewhere but hopefully this closes this down. I'm not sure why you would want to download the WSDL dynamically but the system properties:

sun.net.client.defaultConnectTimeout (default: -1 (forever))
sun.net.client.defaultReadTimeout (default: -1 (forever))

should apply to all reads and connects using HttpURLConnection which JAX-WS uses. This should solve your problem if you are getting the WSDL from a remote location - but a file on your local disk is probably better!

Next, if you want to set timeouts for specific services, once you've created your proxy you need to cast it to a BindingProvider (which you know already), get the request context and set your properties. The online JAX-WS documentation is wrong, these are the correct property names (well, they work for me).

MyInterface myInterface = new MyInterfaceService().getMyInterfaceSOAP();
Map<String, Object> requestContext = ((BindingProvider)myInterface).getRequestContext();
requestContext.put(BindingProviderProperties.REQUEST_TIMEOUT, 3000); // Timeout in millis
requestContext.put(BindingProviderProperties.CONNECT_TIMEOUT, 1000); // Timeout in millis
myInterface.callMyRemoteMethodWith(myParameter);

Of course, this is a horrible way to do things, I would create a nice factory for producing these binding providers that can be injected with the timeouts you want.