I think I have a better understanding of what the problem is although I can't say why it is.....only the server knows for sure.....

In looking at wireshark and referring to the initial tcp/ip handshake, when the initial SYN packet is sent I see now that it is taking approx 1 msec for the server to respond with SYN and ACK.. But, before the server responds(about 300usec after first attempt) the client has apparently concluded that the connection didn't work and so it increments it's listening port number and sends another SYN packet to again try to connect. So, by the time the server responds(1msec after initial attemp) the client is no longer listening on the original listening port it first sent. And after the server tries to respond to the first connection attempt the client sends RST to cancel that first attempt, since it's no longer listening there!! Shortly after that the server catches up and replies with SYN/ACK to the second attempt. From that point communication proceeds normally.

I think this is exactly what was happening to the original posters on this thread . For what ever reason, the server I'm connecting with is not responding to the first connection attempt fast enough!! I worked around this in my code by putting connectToHost in it's own method that simply invokes it and returns. The socket connected or error signals invoke either a connected method or a method to deal with the failed connection attempt.

The question at this point is.....is the server not responding fast enough or is the connection attempt unreasonable in it's expectations regarding timing? Anyone have thoughts on this? Is the server simply slow or do I need to configure something relative to the socket or Linux or whatever?