problem with SOAP::Lite and mod_perl

Hi,

I'm stuck. I'm trying to connect to a simple SOAP service via
SOAP::Lite, e.g.

my $soap = SOAP::Lite->new (uri => $soapaction,
proxy => $endpoint);
my $response = $soap->getSomethingImportant();


If I do the above via a standalone Perl script, it works like a champ.
However, if I try the same thing from within a PerlAuthzHandler, I get
inconsistent behavior. It works sometimes, but other times, it will
hang on the third line shown above, eventually returning a 500 Server
error. With SOAP::Lite debugging on, it looks like the XML is being
sent correctly (or at least it's getting composed correctly), but the
handler appears to timeout with the 500 error after about 30 seconds.

Another data point - if I wait twenty minutes or so before I try again,
it will typically connect, but if I try to connect immediately
afterwards it will fail.

This doesn't appear to be the problem related to the known
--disable-rule=EXPAT problem since I'm not getting any segmentation
faults in the error log.

My environment is Apache 1.3.31, mod_perl-1.2.7, Perl 5.8.3.

Any suggestions anyone can give are greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Stan McFarland