Then the settings.xml starts to contain various repositories maven will try to download artifacts from all defined repository until it is found. Since the central repo is the last repo being queried all other repositories will be queried for all artifacts as well. This causes the build to take extra unneccesary time and additional load on some repository servers. In order to prevent this I would like to be able to specify some filters on the repostories, so maven can check whether or not to ask a repository for a certain component. Suggestion for adjustments in settings.xml: <repository> <id>atlassian</id> <name>Atlassian Repository</name> <url>http://repository.atlassian.com</url> <layout>legacy</layout> <includes> <include>com.atlassion</include </includes> </repository> <repository> <id>codehaus</id> <name>Codehaus Repository</name> <url>http://repository.codehaus.org//</url> <includes> <include>org.codehaus</include </includes> </repository> <repository> <id>central</id> <name>The default maven2 repository</name> <url>http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/</url> <excludes> <exclude>com.atlassion</exclude> <exclude>org.codehaus</exclude> </excludes> </repository> Maven should only attempt to download a certain artifact from a defined repository if the groupId of the artifact could be found on that server. If a repository contains an includes-filter, then only those groupId's configured should be downloaded there. If a repository contains an excludes-filter, then everything except those should be downloaded there.