persistent socket

Hi all,

Since noone could help me in c.l.php I'll try it here.
Is there a way to keep a socket open even after leaving the current
script? What I want to do is save the socket descriptor in a session
variable and reuse it in other scripts. The connection needs to remain
established.
Since the PHP manual claims that pfsockopen opens a persistent socket
connection I expected that function do behave like I want, but it
doesn't. I don't see the difference between pfsockopen and fsockopen.
Has anyone accomplished this before? I saw a lot of postings from people
with the same problem, but noone with a solution.
Thank in advance.

Regards,
Ruben.