fopen() taking ten seconds or more to come back...

For months I've been using...

$fp = fopen("http://www.weather.gov/data/current_obs/KPKB.xml","r";);

.... to open the xml file, which I then parse to extract the local
weather data, and it has worked swell.

Just lately, the page has started hanging, and by blocking off
sections of code and timing different sections I've traced the delay
to that fopen() statement.

The script runs nearly instantaneously from my local drive,
accessing the remote URL, but takes ten or eleven seconds,
consistently, from the web.

I suspected something changed with my web provider, but they're
still running PHP 4.3.1 and allow_url_fopen is on & on.

Any ideas?


Mike Soja

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