The verification of a suspected member can take more than timeout. It depend of being followed closely by other suspected members or not.

Let's timeout = 2000ms.

• At T: Member A is suspected (by Failure Detection protocol).
• At T + 1500ms: Member B is suspected too.

Member A is declared as definitively dead 3500ms later. The "worst case" occurs when a continuous flow of suspected members arrive with an interval between 0 and 2000ms (timeout). Suspected members are never removed from view.