thought you guys may appreciate this function, allows you to pass an array of urls to download and does so simultaneously using non-blocking sockets, then returns the data in an array.
<?php
// function connects to an array of URLS at the same time
// and returns an array of results.
function multiHTTP ($urlArr) {
 $sockets = Array(); // socket array!
 $urlInfo = Array(); // info arr
 $retDone = Array();
 $retData = Array();
 $errno = Array();
 $errstr = Array();
 for ($x=0;$x<count($urlArr);$x++) {
 $urlInfo[$x] = parse_url($urlArr[$x]);
 $urlInfo[$x][port] = ($urlInfo[$x][port]) ? $urlInfo[$x][port] : 80;
 $urlInfo[$x][path] = ($urlInfo[$x][path]) ? $urlInfo[$x][path] : "/";
 $sockets[$x] = fsockopen($urlInfo[$x][host], $urlInfo[$x][port],
 $errno[$x], $errstr[$x], 30);
 socket_set_blocking($sockets[$x],FALSE);
 $query = ($urlInfo[$x][query]) ? "?" . $urlInfo[$x][query] : "";
 fputs($sockets[$x],"GET " . $urlInfo[$x][path] . "$query HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: " .
 $urlInfo[$x][host] . "\r\n\r\n");
 }
 // ok read the data from each one
 $done = false;
 while (!$done) {
 for ($x=0; $x < count($urlArr);$x++) {
 if (!feof($sockets[$x])) {
 if ($retData[$x]) {
 $retData[$x] .= fgets($sockets[$x],128);
 } else {
 $retData[$x] = fgets($sockets[$x],128);
 }
 } else {
 $retDone[$x] = 1;
 }
 }
 $done = (array_sum($retDone) == count($urlArr));
 }
 return $retData;
}
?>