Strange Connection Problems

[KrustyTheRabidDog]

We have a custom app that occasionally has connection problems with the apache server we use to hand out ssl certificates. I used NAI Sniffer to get the following data:

When the connection is successful, the client machine send a request to the Apache Webserver on port 15000 with the following data:
GET /servlet/GetIOR HTTP/1.0
User-Agent: Java1.1.8
Host: gkssl.vue.com:15000
Accept: text/html, image/gif, image/jpg, *; q=.2, */*; q=.2

Connection: keep-alive

Which Apache repsonds to with (after the packet ack) :
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 15:36:34 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.1.2
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain

IOR: (data)

When the failures occur we see:
GET /servlet/GetIOR HTTP/1.0
User-Agent: Java1.1.8
Host: gkssl.vue.com:15000
Accept: text/html, image/gif, image/jpg, *; q=2, */*; q=.2

Connection: keep-alive

Which Apache responds to with (after the packet ack):
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 15:36:34 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) ApacheJServ/1.1.2
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain

but no IOR data...

Then Apache sends another packet with the IOR data immediately, without waiting for the ACK from client machine.

Then the client machine sends another request for and IOR, and Apache responds correctly this time, but our app reports an error.

I have checked the Apache logs and found no errors reported.

Any thoughts?