Request Timeout
The HTTP 408 Request Timeout
response status code means that the
server would like to shut down this unused connection. It is sent on an idle connection
by some servers, even without any previous request by the client.
A server should send the "close" Connection
header field in the
response, since 408
implies that the server has decided to close the
connection rather than continue waiting.
This response is used much more since some browsers, like Chrome, Firefox 27+, and IE9, use HTTP pre-connection mechanisms to speed up surfing.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/408