I have cached method (EhCache) and it's using BlockingCache and timeoutMillis set to 1000. I've tested, that if there are simultaneous attempts to request the method with same key etc., these requests aren't waiting for the first request to finish. So it seems that BlockingCache really isn't blocking.

Also, if I set Thread.sleep(2000) into the method, shouldn't timeout happen? The request is just waiting for 2 seconds and continues to process the method. I'm using Spring-Modules 0.9, Spring 2.5.5 and JDK 1.5.0_06.