rsync --timeout question

[Eric Horne]

I'm just not entirely clear from the man page.. does the timeout start 
counting from the last communication, or does it start counting from the 
beginning of the transmission?

also, if the server is set to timeout at, say, 300s, and it's busy 
moving stuff around but not talking to the client, does the timeout 
start counting? So if it takes 300s to move a file out of a partial-dir 
(just pretend), would the server timeout?

Thanks

-Eric