FastCGI timeout using drupal_http_request

I got alerted to this by the HTTP Request Status item in the status report: Fail. Somehow drupal_http_request exits and takes the answer as being a failure. When doing the something with curl it works, although quite slow, if I compare with a fully baked drupal 6 site.
Furthermore I had to add

proxy_ignore_client_abort on;

to my nginx config so that curl completes the request. Otherwise it gives a 499 status code. I have a slow machine, but shouldn't drupal_http_request and curl -I give the same result:

1. With curl

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:01:33 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=20
Vary: Accept-Encoding
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12-2
Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT
Last-Modified: Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:00:22 +0000
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
ETag: "1286560822"
X-Frame-Options: sameorigin

With drupal_http_request:

drush> php-eval 'print_r(drupal_http_request(url("http://maxwell:89", array("absolute" => TRUE)), array("max_redirects" => 0)));'
stdClass Object
(
    [request] => GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: maxwell:89
User-Agent: Drupal (+http://drupal.org/)


    [code] => 1
    [error] => request timed out
)

If I pass the option 'timeout' => 60 it returns a 200. But I get an error:

drush> php-eval 'print_r(drupal_http_request(url("http://maxwell:89", array("absolute" => TRUE)), array("max_redirects" => 0, "timeout" => 60)));'
stdClass Object
(
    [request] => GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: maxwell:89
User-Agent: Drupal (+http://drupal.org/)

    [data] =>
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/appa/sites/d7/includes/database/database.inc on line 812

...
    [protocol] => HTTP/1.1
    [status_message] => OK
    [headers] => Array
        (
            [server] => nginx
            [date] => Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:12:57 GMT
            [content-type] => text/html; charset=utf-8
            [connection] => close
            [vary] => Accept-Encoding
            [x-powered-by] => PHP/5.2.12-2
            [expires] => Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT
            [last-modified] => Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:12:21 +0000
            [cache-control] => no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
            [etag] => "1286561541"
            [x-frame-options] => sameorigin
        )

    [code] => 200

Could be of my slow machine. Albeit being plenty for developing with D6.