DNS issues and redirection

Hi everyone: I have got an odd problem. What I have is a Win2k box running Apache 1.3.12 with PHP 4.02pl1 and MySQL connected on an internal network to a SuSE7 Linux box running Apache 1.3.14 and PHP 4.02 with mod_ssl enabled. I have a dynamic hostname from dyndns.org and am on a dialup Internet connection. The problem is I would like to redirect the Win2k Apache to the Linux boxes SSL aware Apache and use PHP to do this. However, PHP seems unable to cope with https queries but is fine with http queries. For example, at it simplest; echo "<li>SSL server: "; if(@fopen("https://192.168.0.3/index.php","+r")) { echo "Running"; } else echo "Down"; } echo "</li>"; echo "<li>Non-SSL server: "; if(fopen("http://192.168.0.3/index.php","+r")) { echo "Running"; } else echo "Down"; } echo "</li>"; The top https query failes, hence the @ to stem the error messages but the http one succeeds. So, is there anyway of achieving both boxes to be directly available to the Net connection, hence skipping the PHP redirection, without the use of a DNS server or a way to allow both Apache servers to 'chat' between themselves using PHP? Any advice, urls or pointer would be greatly appreciated. Regards. Jerry