I'm having this strange error, CURL ERROR: Recv failure: Connection reset by peer

This is how it happens, if I did not connect to the server and all of a sudden trying to connect to the server via CURL in PHP I get the error. When I run the CURL script again the error disappears and then works well the whole time, if I leave the remote server idle for about 30mins or reboot the remote server and try to connect again, I get the error again. So it seems like the connection is idle and then all of sudden the server wakes up and then works and then sleeps again.

This is how my CURL script looks.

$url = Yii::app()->params['pdfUrl'];
            $body = 'title='.urlencode($title).'&client_url='.Yii::app()->params['pdfClientURL'].'&client_id='.Yii::app()->params['pdfClientID'].'&content='.urlencode(htmlentities($content));

            $c = curl_init ($url);
            $body = array(
                "client_url"=>Yii::app()->params['pdfClientURL'],
                "client_id"=>Yii::app()->params['pdfClientID'],
                "title"=>urlencode($title),
                "content"=>urlencode($content)

            );
            foreach($body as $key=>$value) { $body_str .= $key.'='.$value.'&'; }
                rtrim($body_str,'&');

            curl_setopt ($c, CURLOPT_POST, true);
            curl_setopt ($c, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $body_str);
            curl_setopt ($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
            curl_setopt ($c, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT , 0);
            curl_setopt ($c, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT  , 20);

            $pdf = curl_exec ($c);
            $errorCode = curl_getinfo($c, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
            $curlInfo = curl_getinfo($c);
            $curlError = curl_error($c);

            curl_close ($c);

I'm totally out of ideas and solutions, please help, I'll appreciate it!!!

If I verbose the output to see what happens using

curl_setopt ($c, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, TRUE);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_STDERR, $fp); 

I get the following

* About to connect() to 196.41.139.168 port 80 (#0)
*   Trying 196.x.x.x... * connected
* Connected to 196.x.x.x (196.x.x.x) port 80 (#0)
> POST /serve/?r=pdf/generatePdf HTTP/1.1
Host: 196.x.x.x
Accept: */*
Content-Length: 7115
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Expect: 100-continue

* Recv failure: Connection reset by peer
* Closing connection #0
012 20:23:49 GMT
< Server: Apache/2.2.15 (CentOS)
< X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.3
< Connection: close
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
< 
* Closing connection #0

I've added in the following toe remove the default header and still no luck:

curl_setopt ($c, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array( 'Expect:' ) );

> Accept: */* Content-Length: 8414 Content-Type:
> application/x-www-form-urlencoded
> 
> * Recv failure: Connection reset by peer
> * Closing connection #0 r: Apache/2.2.15 (CentOS) < X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.3 < Connection: close < Transfer-Encoding: chunked <
> Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 < 
> * Closing connection #0