At least some versions of PHP have a bug that causes scripts to hang for 10 seconds after calling file_get_contents('php://input') for a request with a content-length header value that exceeds the actual content length. (see https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=64014) This bug is present in the most current PHP package on Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS.

Using Zend_Http_Client, if setRawData() called on a request that is not a POST, PUT or DELETE request, a content-length header will be inserted by _prepareHeaders() but the content will not be included in the request, thus triggering a 10 second delay in the server processing the request.