Can someone help me with this code please?

Following is the code that will do a remote scrape of http://www3.brinkster.com/soa/val/profile/display.asp (which sometimes goes down), however, it should time out and produce an error after 5 seconds; instead, sometimes, the entire page (http://valsignalandet.com) which includes this script below, takes up to 90 seconds to load because of the ASP script locking, in spite of my safeguards. Can anyone please help; I'm out of ideas. Thanx Phil <? require_once('/users/ppowell/web/php_global_vars.php'); // OPEN SOCKET CONNECTION TO BRINKSTER SET TO TIMEOUT IN 2 SECONDS $res = ''; $fp = fsockopen('www3.brinkster.com', 80, &$errno, &$errstr, 2) or die('Oops'); if (!$fp) { echo "${font}Cannot profiles at this time. <a href=http://www3.brinkster.com/soa/val/profile/view.asp>Click here</a> or try again later</font><p>"; } else { $httpStr = "POST /soa/val/profile/display.asp?showLeftNavBanner=1 HTTP/1.0\r\nAccept: text/*\r\nUser-agent: NC_GET_URL\r\nHost: www3.brinkster.com:80\r\n\r\n"; fputs($fp, $httpStr); $start = time(); // DOUBLE TIME SETTING: SET FOR BOTH STREAM TIMEOUT AND FOR DATA LOOPING TIMEOUT TO // ENSURE THAT THE WHOLE PROCESS IS 5 SECONDS OR IT QUITS // STREAM COMMANDS DON'T WORK ON VAL BECAUSE PHP VERSION IS TOO OLD - CRAP! list($phpVersion1, $phpVersion2, $phpVersion3) = explode('.', phpversion()); if ($phpVersion1 >=4 && $phpVersion2 >= 3) { if (!stream_set_timeout($fp, 5)) echo 'Could not set stream timeout<p>'; if (!stream_set_blocking($fp, 0)) echo 'Could not set stream blocking<p>'; } $now = $start; while (!feof($fp) && $now < $start + 5) { $res .= fgets($fp, 4096); $now = time(); } fclose($fp); } if (strlen($res) > 0 && $now < $start + 5) { echo trim(substr($res, strpos($res, '<'), strlen(trim($res)))); } else { echo "${font}Could not display profiles at this time. <a href=http://www3.brinkster.com/soa/val/profile/view.asp>Click here</a> or try again later</font><p>"; } ?>