fastcgiexternalserver to connect to a remote php pool

Ok... I've read 2 years worth of these mailing lists and as much as I 
could find elsewhere (which isn't a lot).

I've gotten almost everything to work with fastcgi... dynamic servers, 
static servers, suexec, php4 and php5 - even switching from php4 to php5 
using an alias and two different actions - fun stuff.

i'm using apache 2.0.52 with mpm/worker and the last available snapshot 
of mod_fastcgi

What I am having a lot of trouble doing is configuring apache / php to 
talk to each other across the network.

i'm trying to use this command on server 1 (192.168.0.2):
php -b 192.168.0.2:9998
this starts up php...

i've got apache running on server 2 (192.168.0.3):
#excerpt from httpd.conf
LoadModule fastcgi_module modules/mod_fastcgi.so
Alias /fcgi-bin/ "/usr/local/web5/apache/fcgi-bin/"
FastCgiExternalServer /usr/local/web5/apache/fcgi-bin/php-cgi \
-host 192.168.0.2:9998
AddType application/x-httpd-fastphp .php
Action application/x-httpd-fastphp /fcgi-bin/php-cgi

At first, I got the generic "No input file specified." when I tried 
accessing one of the sites served by apache on server 2.

Wasted a day on that trying to figure out what I needed... if I export 
this to the user runnin the php daemon:
export FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS=192.168.0.3

and restart php, reload the page, I get an Internal Server Error with 
the only clues being "incomplete headers" 0 bytes type errors in the 
apache error logs

Thats as far as I can get - after a few days of realllllly trying to get 
this to work adjusting the httpd.conf and php.ini - forcing redirects, 
setting doc_root, passing headers, flushing .... everything i could find 
and make sense of.

The funny thing is, if I run php and apache on the same server with the 
fastcgiexternalserver configuration, it works great. I've tried it with 
127.0.0.1 and 192.168.0.3, php4 and php5 with the exact configuration 
listed above except for the difference in IP address (and not exporting 
anything)

I guess I'm really lookin for some guidance on where to look next or 
what I might try. I'm starting to think in circles, and I'll spare the 
list some of my sillier thoughts.

TIA

-dan
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