problem in fopen

Dear all, i tried to get some data from a remote website by using fopen(). $data_path = http://www.mysite.com/data.txt"; $fp = @fopen ($data_path, "r"); The script works fine if the remove site (http://www.mysite.com/data.txt) is up and accessible. However, the script take a very long time to run if the server is down. Is it possible to add any time constraint in the script such that the fopen() operation will abort, say, after 10 seconds ? Or any alternative suggestion? thx a lot~~~ HPS