How are you setting the timeout value? The timeout value specified as the 5th argument to fsockopen() is only the timeout for the connection initiation. The read/write timeouts should be set via the stream_set_timeout() (CVS) or set_socket_timeout() in older versions.

Here is a snippet of the code, I tried set_socket_timeout it didnt work.  this is using socket_set_timeout and it doesnt work either.
  function getrules()
   {
    $address="udp://".$this->ip;
    $this->socket=fsockopen($address,$this->port,$this->errno,$this->errstr,5);
    if(!$this->socket)
     {
      exit();
     }

    set_socket_blocking($this->socket, FALSE);
    $outstring="????rules";
    fwrite($this->socket,$outstring);
    $inbyte=$this->waitstart();
    $this->rules[firstchunk]=$inbyte . fread($this->socket,3);
    $this->rules[rulesbyte]=$this->getchar();
    $this->rules[number]=$this->getint();
    for($loop=0;$loop<$this->rules[number];$loop++)
     {
		$this->rules[rules][$loop][name]=$this->getstring();
	      $this->rules[rules][$loop][value]=$this->getstring();
	//$rulename=getstring;
      //$ruleval=getstring;
      //$this->rules[rules][$loop][name]=$rulename;
      //$this->rules[rules][$loop][value]=$ruleval;
     }

    fclose($this->socket);
    return;
   }

  function waitstart()
   {
    socket_set_timeout($this->socket, 0, 500);
    $inbyte=fread($this->socket,1);
    while($inbyte=="")
     {
	  socket_set_timeout($this->socket, 0, 500);
      $inbyte=fread($this->socket,1);
     }
    return $inbyte;
   }
  function getstring()
   {
   socket_set_timeout($this->socket, 0, 500);
    $inbyte=fread($this->socket,1);
    while($inbyte != "\0")
     {
      $string.=$inbyte;
	  socket_set_timeout($this->socket, 0, 500);
      $inbyte=fread($this->socket,1);
     }
    return $string;
   }

seems the problem is with fread and socket timeout changed to fgetc and all is well works the way it should
but fread and udp and socket timeout has some problem.

Can you clarify what the problem is?
And can you trim down the code to something small, preferably using some standard service so that we can reproduce it here?

$fp = fsockopen(...)
fwrite($fp, "foo");
$data = fread($fp, 1);

Tell us what you expect to happen, and what does actually
happen.  Is PHP returning too soon, waiting too long?

UDP is a connectionless protocol, so you have to write your scripts to take that fact into account.
Also, please only test with a PHP 4.3 RC as this is where any fix would be made (4.2 is very old code compared to 4.3).

No feedback was provided. The bug is being suspended because
we assume that you are no longer experiencing the problem.
If this is not the case and you are able to provide the
information that was requested earlier, please do so and
change the status of the bug back to "Open". Thank you.