Neither of the following snippets return anything.
System chugs away for a few seconds and command prompt
returns (also tried it via a web request).  Same result
when substituting hostname with ip address.

// test 1
   <?php
   readfile("http://www.php.net/");
   ?>

// test 2
   <?php
   $fp = fopen("http://www.php.net/","r");
   if (!fp) {
     echo "unable to open url";
     exit;
   } 
   echo "here\n";   # code never gets here
   while (!feof($fp)) {
     $thepage .= fgets($fp,4096);
   }
   fclose($fp);
   echo "...\n$thepage...\n";
   ?>