TCP delay, SMTP errors

["Nathan Cassano" <nathan@cjhunter.com>]

Hi folks,
	Our website (on an internal NAT'ed network) connects our email
server (on an external network). The website uses a SMTP PHP class to
send mail using socket connections. The problem is a delay in connecting
to the mail server that causes the class to quit prematurely. I fixed
the problem by adding a function call to sleep(1) after fsockopen() but
this is a hack. Is there a better way to fix this TCP delay? I tried
setting the TOS value to Minimize-Delay but I didn't see any difference.
Any suggestions are welcome. 

Nathan

PHP script 
<?php

$this->connection = fsockopen("mail.server.tld", 25, $errno, $errstr,
30);

socket_set_timeout($this->connection, 10, 0);

$smtp_greeting = fgets($this->connection, 512);

?>

$IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -t mangle -p tcp --dport 25 -j TOS --set-tos
Minimize-Delay