[ILUG] Terminate process after a set time limit

[Kieran Tully]

Is there a standard way to impose a time limit on a child process, and
terminate it when the limit is reached?

I have a BASH script which ssh'es into multiple systems.
One unreliable remote system sometimes causes ssh to block for hours.
If ssh has been running for more than 15 minutes, I'd like to kill it
and move on to the next system.

Googling reveals rlimit and ulimt -t, but that only limits CPU time
consumed, whereas I want a hard limit on real world time. The only ssh
options I can find apply to connect()time, and I don't believe that's
the problem here.
-- 
Kieran Tully, Software Developer and Tenor, http://kieran.tul.ly