the source of the problem is gethostbyaddr(). it seems to have a 4,5 second timeout, so some lookups time out after 4,5 seconds, while most of them are resolved in < 0.1 second; a radically performance difference. the user written gethostbyaddr_timeout() on the gethostbyaddr man page overcomes this problem, but unlike gethostbyaddr() requires a specific dns address, which seems unavailable from php at the moment. parsing nslookup and similar things seems like a workaround. where does one propose a dns_ip() function which returns the system's default dns ip address? or better yet, to add a timeout value to gethostbyaddr(), or in some other way ensure that lookups return quickly, whether they have an answer or not. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php