diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
index f7a98e5c40..99061c0e65 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
@@ -585,6 +585,9 @@ Release 2.4.0 - UNRELEASED
     HDFS-5748. Too much information shown in the dfs health page.
     (Haohui Mai via brandonli)
 
+    HDFS-5806. balancer should set SoTimeout to avoid indefinite hangs.
+    (Nathan Roberts via Andrew Wang).
+
   BREAKDOWN OF HDFS-2832 SUBTASKS AND RELATED JIRAS
 
     HDFS-4985. Add storage type to the protocol and expose it in block report
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/balancer/Balancer.java b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/balancer/Balancer.java
index 4d64173786..ade62f9c97 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/balancer/Balancer.java
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/balancer/Balancer.java
@@ -337,6 +337,7 @@ private void dispatch() {
         sock.connect(
             NetUtils.createSocketAddr(target.datanode.getXferAddr()),
             HdfsServerConstants.READ_TIMEOUT);
+        sock.setSoTimeout(HdfsServerConstants.READ_TIMEOUT);
         sock.setKeepAlive(true);
         
         OutputStream unbufOut = sock.getOutputStream();