Connection timed out when server is present in a far off place

[Jaikiran Pai]

We have a web application on JBoss-3.2.3. It makes use of Applets. To paint the applet, a request is sent to a server using a HttpURLConnection. Evertyhing works fine when the browser(client) and the server are on the same network. However, if the client(browser) is in Australia and the server in India(i.e. long distance between server and client), then the Applet crashes with a Connection timed out exception. Any solution for this?
The code looks something like:

URL url = new URL(urlString);
        HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
 
        connection.setDoOutput(true);
        connection.connect();

[Dave Robbins]

checkout setReadTimeout
it's in the parent class URLConnection

Dave