Some events are not dispatched when app runs in background

Question

My Android app has a TIMER event which fires once every second to connect a TCP socket (class flash.net.Socket) and send a request.
A packet sniffer confirms that a socket is in fact connecting, request is sent, reply comes back and connection is closed, all happening once per second.
Clearly, even with the app in the background, the TIMER event is occurring every second, because the timer handler is initating every socket.
But not every closing connection causes a CLOSE event to dispatch, because my close handler is called less frequently.  Sometimes once in 3 seconds, 8 seconds or even longer.
The CLOSE dispatches correctly once per second when the app is in the foreground.
Why are CLOSE events being missed when the app is in the background?  What is the difference between a TIMER event and a CLOSE event, causing one to dispatch correctly but not the other?
Thanks.

Answer 1

I've narrowed my problem down by chopping pieces of code until it works, and I think I have it narrowed down to the code that uses FlexGraphing but need to check a bit more...
It's odd that it works in Flex3 builder though, and there are no errors when I run in as AIR. In fact, the app RUNS, since it is in the task manager, but it won't appear.