1124625 - fail quickly if there is a connection error

Allows requests timeout settings to be configurable and set reasonable defaults. If requests does timeout (a connection error), these changes prevent requests from attempting the same base url again.
[1124625](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1124625)
To reinforce previous comments, when a request is skipped, it would be better for it to have an error message saying that it was skipped.