Intermittently getting empty responses from GET /package/version requests

[jkroso]

The function that makes the requests is this one:

function latest(name, spec,done){
  var path = encodeURI('/' + name + '/' + spec)
  http.get({
    hostname: 'registry.npmjs.org',
    path: path
  }, function (res) {
    var buf = ''
    res.on('data', function(data){
      buf += data
    })
    res.on('end', function(){
      if (buf) done(null, JSON.parse(buf))
      else done(new Error('received an empty response for ' + path))
    })
    res.on('error', done)
  })
}

Most of the time its fine but it gets called hundreds of times and usually one request will have this problem. If I rerun the program immediately it typically will have the same problem on a request for the same module it had problems with last time. If I wait a minute or so It will come right but then usually another module becomes the problem. I have been able to reproduce with curl but often it works with curl and not node. Yet npm view always works. This used to be pretty reliable. Has the HTTP API changed?