Any known issue with PHP file() function passing a URL to it on GoDaddy servers?

[newhere]

I'm using a plugin which passes a URL to the file() function. It was working for a while, but then mysteriously stopped working. The code did not change.

The warning is:

Warning: file(...): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed!

Where "..." is the URL passed to file() (E.g. "http://finance.yahoo.com/...")

This is on a GoDaddy server where I do not have access to the logs.

Same code works on other servers I have tried.

Does GoDaddy (sometimes) firewall outgoing http connections? As I said, this worked for a while, then stopped, then worked intermittently. Is there some PHP server config that would cause this?

Thanks for any help