No timeout for nss_ldap?

My problem is that, when using libnss_ldap (Debian 4.0/OpenLDAP 2.3.30)
every failure in the network link results in blocking all machines.
My setup looks like this:

-------
/etc/libnss_ldap.conf
URI ldaps://ldap.ipodion.at:636
base dc=int,dc=ipodion,dc=at
bind_timelimit 5
-------

bind_timelimit didn't show any effect, probably due to the ldap client
libs..

-------
/etc/nsswitch.conf
passwd:         compat ldap
group:          compat ldap
shadow:         compat ldap
[...]
-------

I tried both files and compat but without seeing any difference

nscd ist off on both client and server machine.

Using this setup everything seems to work perfectly. Simulating  a
network failure by changing URI ldaps://ldap.ipodion.at:636 to URI
ldaps://xxxldap.ipodion.at:636 results in "getent passwd" displaying the
local users and then hanging for a long time (I never waited long
enought but at least 20 minutes).
Any login attempts to that machine fail as well... i.e. hang
indefinitely....

I cannot believe that I can't find a solution to this probably simple
but serious problem.

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