diff --git a/pkg/nfd-master/node-updater-pool.go b/pkg/nfd-master/node-updater-pool.go
index 55ce2a712..39eb2234b 100644
--- a/pkg/nfd-master/node-updater-pool.go
+++ b/pkg/nfd-master/node-updater-pool.go
@@ -18,7 +18,9 @@ package nfdmaster
 
 import (
 	"sync"
+	"time"
 
+	"golang.org/x/time/rate"
 	"k8s.io/client-go/util/workqueue"
 	"k8s.io/klog/v2"
 )
@@ -48,7 +50,7 @@ func (u *nodeUpdaterPool) processNodeUpdateRequest(queue workqueue.RateLimitingI
 
 	nodeUpdateRequests.Inc()
 	if err := u.nfdMaster.nfdAPIUpdateOneNode(nodeName.(string)); err != nil {
-		if queue.NumRequeues(nodeName) < 5 {
+		if queue.NumRequeues(nodeName) < 15 {
 			klog.InfoS("retrying node update", "nodeName", nodeName)
 			queue.AddRateLimited(nodeName)
 			return true
@@ -77,7 +79,14 @@ func (u *nodeUpdaterPool) start(parallelism int) {
 	}
 
 	klog.InfoS("starting the NFD master node updater pool", "parallelism", parallelism)
-	u.queue = workqueue.NewRateLimitingQueue(workqueue.DefaultControllerRateLimiter())
+
+	// Create ratelimiter. Mimic workqueue.DefaultControllerRateLimiter() but
+	// with modified per-item (node) rate limiting parameters.
+	rl := workqueue.NewMaxOfRateLimiter(
+		workqueue.NewItemExponentialFailureRateLimiter(50*time.Millisecond, 100*time.Second),
+		&workqueue.BucketRateLimiter{Limiter: rate.NewLimiter(rate.Limit(10), 100)},
+	)
+	u.queue = workqueue.NewRateLimitingQueue(rl)
 
 	for i := 0; i < parallelism; i++ {
 		u.wg.Add(1)
diff --git a/test/e2e/gomega.go b/test/e2e/gomega.go
index c68363638..2465083b7 100644
--- a/test/e2e/gomega.go
+++ b/test/e2e/gomega.go
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ type k8sAnnotations map[string]string
 func eventuallyNonControlPlaneNodes(ctx context.Context, cli clientset.Interface) AsyncAssertion {
 	return Eventually(func(g Gomega, ctx context.Context) ([]corev1.Node, error) {
 		return getNonControlPlaneNodes(ctx, cli)
-	}).WithPolling(1 * time.Second).WithTimeout(10 * time.Second).WithContext(ctx)
+	}).WithPolling(1 * time.Second).WithTimeout(20 * time.Second).WithContext(ctx)
 }
 
 // MatchLabels returns a specialized Gomega matcher for checking if a list of
diff --git a/test/e2e/node_feature_discovery_test.go b/test/e2e/node_feature_discovery_test.go
index 1a744ecd6..6b9adc6ea 100644
--- a/test/e2e/node_feature_discovery_test.go
+++ b/test/e2e/node_feature_discovery_test.go
@@ -793,6 +793,7 @@ core:
 					Expect(err).NotTo(HaveOccurred())
 
 					By("Verfiying node status capacity from NodeFeatureRules #4")
+					expectedCapacity = map[string]corev1.ResourceList{"*": {}}
 					eventuallyNonControlPlaneNodes(ctx, f.ClientSet).Should(MatchCapacity(expectedCapacity, nodes, false))
 
 					By("Deleting nfd-worker daemonset")