If you’re using HTTP 1.1 in your Akismet client, or the one in PEAR, there’s a bug that could cause your client to timeout.
The problem does not lie with Akismet servers, the problem lies in an incorrect implementation of HTTP/1.1 persistent connections in the Akismet class. The Akismet API servers support persistent connections for HTTP/1.1 but the class is not written to use persistent connections. Specifying a ‘Connection: close’ header will fix the problem for HTTP/1.1.
