diff --git a/brozzler/browser.py b/brozzler/browser.py
index df4a500..b98f01a 100644
--- a/brozzler/browser.py
+++ b/brozzler/browser.py
@@ -157,7 +157,10 @@ class WebsockReceiverThread(threading.Thread):
         brozzler.thread_raise(self.calling_thread, BrowsingException)
 
     def run(self):
-        self.websock.run_forever()
+        # ping_timeout is used as the timeout for the call to select.select()
+        # in addition to its documented purpose, and must have a value to avoid
+        # hangs in certain situations
+        self.websock.run_forever(ping_timeout=0.5)
 
     def _on_message(self, websock, message):
         try:
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 4d22eab..a71986f 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ def find_package_data(package):
 
 setuptools.setup(
         name='brozzler',
-        version='1.1b9.dev173',
+        version='1.1b9.dev174',
         description='Distributed web crawling with browsers',
         url='https://github.com/internetarchive/brozzler',
         author='Noah Levitt',