Slow socket-operations...

Hello ! I have big problems using "set_time_limit" and "flush()". I tried it on a computer (Win98, Apache), which is NOT connected to any net to see how the programm behaves in the case the network is down or a host is not reachable. The code: print all the html-stuff.... set_time_limit(2); print "Validating...\n"; flush(); if (!getmxrr("mydomain.com", $mxhosts)) print "Error"; else print "Ok"; Problem 1) Flush() doesn't do anything (testet on IE 5, NS 3,4 and 4.7). Problem 2) set_time_limit doesn't do anything. The Browser waits and waits and waits... Any ideas ? How can I avoid the browser "waiting to death" WITHOUT changing anything in the apache- or php-configuration ? Regards Martin