CURL intermittant problem

I have been having problems with a curl script which works normally with many different URLs but had a particular intermittant problem with a url in the following format: http://10.20.30.40/00000001/032/023112/filename.phtml?param1=paramvalue1&param2=paramvalue2 etc etc. The unusual thing about this URL is that is starts with an IP address. I got a lot of failures to connect, so tried a different way to connect as all I need is the page as a string: According to php.net, the function 'file_get_contents()' should work if allow_url_fopen is set to TRUE for the PHP installation. 'allow_url_fopen' is set to 1 in my php.ini file. http://php.net/file_get_contents http://php.net/allow_url_fopen However, 'file_get_contents' also fails to connect to this particular URL. It gives: "failed to open stream: Connection timed out in */home/shortsta/public_html/live48_test.php* on line *75* *Warning*: feof(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in */home/mysite/public_html/testpage.php* on line *79*" The target URL works perfectly and quicly if put directly into the browser URL line. Do you know of any other reasons for problems with such a connection? John