database connection timeout

Hi, I'm trying to connect to an Oracle database (using ocilogon) which is in a different country and connected to our serverfarm via a VPN (the database has no public access). Unfortunately the VPN or the database is not always available. In those cases I will present the visitor with a page explaining that the service is unavailable. My problem is that ocilogon takes a long time to return control if the connection cannot be established - often even more than 30 seconds. I've learned that if a connection can be established it'll happen in only a few seconds (usually within 1 second) and am convinced that if the connection is not established in eg 5 seconds, there is no point in waiting another eg 30 seconds. How can I tell ocilogon to timeout after eg 5 seconds (like you can with fsockopen)? Rgds, Jos