How to increase the timeout to a web service request?

Try if this would work for you.

Firstly, you need to increase the timeout of the executionTimeout attribute of the httpRuntime element. Note that this is mentioned in Seconds unlike the other timeout attributes like the Session timeout and others.

<httpRuntime     executionTimeout="36000"

And moreover, this attribute takes effect only when you set the debug attribute of the Compilation element to false. This is also specified in the MSDN link that you mentioned. Like,

<compilation    debug="false" ../>

But this works in conjunction with the Session timeout. Yes, if the session times out , then an error would be thrown. and it wouldn't wait for the executionTimeout value to take effect. so you also need to set the Session Timeout to a higher value. And note that this is in minutes. which would look like,

<sessionState     mode="InProc"     timeout="360"    ...    />

And note that all of this would be overriden by AppPool recycling process. so you need to set the Idle Timeout value of the Apppool that your website uses to atleast same / higher value than the session timeout.

I found it here http://www.eggheadcafe.com/community/aspnet/17/10111748/how-can-we-increase-the-t.aspx

The default timeout of web application is 90 seconds which is usually more than enough for general purpose use. It is important to note where the timeout is coming from. Is it from the page itself or something in the page that is causing it. In either case, it would appear that the "the page" is timing out.

I stumbled upon this question as my page was timing out too. Found out the exception was coming from SQL (read the the actual error) so it was really SQL problem. Once I knew it, I could easily fix it.

In web.config file

<binding name="endpointname" sendTimeout="00:3:00" />

This will update timeout property to 3 minutes