Rsync hangs on connection

[Ashwani Gahlot]

Hi,

I am using rsync daemon (client server) running  for few weeks,it  was
running great , but yesterday rsync started taking a long time to try to
connect to the server.

The rsync command(on client) is taking  around 3 minutes 44 sec to say that
connection failed, even when I am using - -timeout=10 in the rsync command.
But one can do a successful ping to the server. Later it was identified
that there was some problem with server firewall.

Should not rsync return after 10 sec that "it is unable to connect"?
Also is there any other way to check if the server is up before doing the
rsync?

thanks-
Ashwani