You are using PHP/5.3.3 which has some serious bugs too ... I would adviceadvise you to work with a more recent version of PHP and CURL
One common cause of this error is that the MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) size of packets travelling over your network connection havehas been changed from the default of 1500 bytes.
If you have configured a VPN this most likely must changed during configuration
Try on a different server or on a remote server ( So many free cloud hosting online) and test the same script .. ifIf it works then my guesses are correct ... You need to update your system
I hope it helps