The invention aims at providing a method and equipment for determining whether to issue a back-up request. The method specifically comprises the following step: determining an RTO numerical value according a preset rule, wherein the RTO numerical value is taken as new predicted response time of a next request and is used for determining whether to issue the back-up request. The preset rule includes at least one of the following steps: if a request sent by user equipment to corresponding first network equipment is successfully responded, updating a SRTT numerical value and an RTTVAR numerical value according to actual response time corresponding to the request so as to obtain a first SRTT numerical value and a first RTTVAR numerical value, and determining the RTO numerical value according to the first SRTT numerical value and the first RTTVAR numerical value; and if waiting time for receiving response exceeds predicted response time after the request is sent by the user equipment to the corresponding first network equipment, determining the RTO numerical value according to the predicted response time. Compared with the prior art, the method and the equipment have the beneficial effects that the RTO numerical value and a self-adapting back-up request are dynamically calculated, so that the integral performance of a system is improved.