Can't read remote Web page from local Apache/PHP

[dave_nul]

Hello. I'm trying to read the contents of any Web page on another
host. I'm finding that...

echo file_get_contents( 'http://www.php.net' );

.... works fine if I upload the PHP script to my Web host, and run it
there. But if I run it on my PC, which is running Apache 1.3.33
(Win32) and PHP 5.0.5, then it always times out, and gives me the error
message...

[error] PHP Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.php.net) [<a
href='function.file-get-contents'>function.file-get-contents</a>]:
failed to open stream: A connection attempt failed because the
connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or
established connection failed because connected host has failed to
respond.

I get the exact same results using...

$fh = fopen( 'http://www.php.net', 'r' ) or die( $php_errormsg );
while (! feof($fh)) {
$page .= fread($fh,1048576);
}
fclose($fh);
echo $page;
Anyone know what could cause this to happen?

[samudas]

hmmm, do you have any firewall software running that might be causing
problems? Also some isp's will conviently (for them) block any traffic
trying to connect to port 80 on your machine effectively stopping you
from running a webserver visible to the outside world.

[samudas]

hmmm, do you have any firewall software running that might be causing
problems? Also some isp's will conveniently (for them) block any
traffic trying to connect to port 80 on your machine effectively
stopping you from running a webserver visible to the outside world.

[dave_nul]

Thanks for the reply. It turns out my firewall software was blocking
outgoingTCP traffic from Apache.exe, but not notifying me, as I'm used
to.