The only such patch I could find was this: http://openhack.ru/nginx-patched/

Which only works with the memcached_gzip plugin of which it is a part.

I too would find this feature extremely helpful. Preventing the situation where some request takes just a bit too long and times out on server or generates the "wrong" type of error and nginx tries upstream server after upstream server, without bound.

Any other suggestions? Is anyone working on a simpler patch?

Bryn