Download failed with code 110

Our server is behind a firewall and we use a proxy to get outside.

When I import any feed I get this error:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'HRCurlException' with message 'cURL error (7)
Failed to connect to [thefeedurl] Network is unreachable for ...

I have added this code to settings.php
$conf['feeds_never_use_curl'] = true;

I have turn off curl inside: sites/all/modules/feeds/libraries/http_request.inc

function http_request_use_curl() {
// Allow site administrators to choose to not use cURL.
if (variable_get('feeds_never_use_curl', TRUE)) {
return FALSE;
}

The rss feeds will not pull. When I try I get error:
Download of [thefeedurl] failed with code -110.

I've also tried to use the module:
update_status_proxy

The strange thing is that I have two almost identical drupal 6 sites set up on this Centos server. one site can pull in the feeds but the other site cannot. So i don't think the problem is related to server configuration, it must be the drupal site. Maybe the file chmod settings are different on each site.