title: I/O error(socket error): [Errno 111] Connection refused
body: <p>I have a program that uses urllib to periodically fetch a url, and I see intermittent
  errors like : </p>
  
  <p>I/O error(socket error): [Errno 111] Connection refused. </p>
  
  <p>It works 90% of the time, but the othe r10% it fails. If retry the fetch immediately after it fails, it succeeds. I'm unable to figure out why this is so. I tried to see if any ports are available, and they are. Any debugging ideas? </p>
  
  <p>For additional info, the stack  trace is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib.py", line 203, in open 
      return getattr(self, name)(url)
  
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib.py", line 342, in open_http
      h.endheaders()
  
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/httplib.py", line 868, in endheaders
      self._send_output()
  
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/httplib.py", line 740, in _send_output
      self.send(msg)
  
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/httplib.py", line 699, in send
      self.connect()
  
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/httplib.py", line 683, in connect
      self.timeout)
  
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/socket.py", line 512, in create_connection
      raise error, msg
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Edit - A google search isn't very helpful, what I got out of it is that the server
  I'm fetching from sometimes refuses connections, how can I verify its not a bug in my code
  and this is indeed the case?</p>