Seems like Google decreases the default urlfetch deadline to 5 secs again. Good news is we can set it to 10 secs manually . Bad news is we can't set the deadline for httplib, the library we are using.
In easy words, now you have the only choice for birdnest. Point your gateway to http://nest.onedd.net.
Anyway, I'll think about the proper solution within next week. Any suggestions are welcome.