sockets

Hi, I am running 4.3.0pre2 on RH 7.2 and on Windows2k I am trying to implement a socket based client/server communication program with the server being on the Linux side and the current test client on windows (although it will be on Linux eventually). A series of commands is sent by the client side which consists of 2 PHP pages, the first with some buttons and the second that sends the button commands to the server using sockets. The problem I am finding is that it appears PHP closes the socket connection once the second script has ended and it returns back to the first. Is there anyway of keeping the socket 'open' or can someone suggest a better way of doing this... Thanks in advance