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Due to earlier versions of position() not throwing TimeoutException, some changes will have to be made to existing data structures to take into account what happens if offsets are not retrieved. One potential change could be made to requestTimeoutMs to factor in a time-bounded position() method.

Rejected Alternatives

One alternative was to add a timeout parameter to position(). However, the changes made by the user will be much more extensive then basing the time constraint on  requestTimeoutMs because the method signature has been changed.