Ok I found an answer to the problem by editing the file in inc/comments/trackback.funcs.php and editing line 91 to show as follows as the port number in the original version is hardcoded to 80

&& ($fp = @fsockopen($trackback_url['host'], $_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'], $foo, $foo, 20)) !== false)

Also if like us you are using http basic authentication with ldap to authenticate create accounts automatically and create a blog for each user then the below will work for protected websites.

You will need to edit lines 92 to 95 to look like this

			
$user=$_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'];
$pw=$_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW'];
$authinfo="$user:$pw";
$auth=base64encode($authinfo);
$header  = 'GET '.$trackback_url['path'].'?'.$trackback_url['query']." HTTP/1.0\r\n";
$header .= 'Host: '.$trackback_url['host']."\r\n";
$header .= 'User-Agent: '.$app_name.'/'.$app_version."\r\n";
$header .= "Authorization: Basic $auth /r/n/r/n";

That will now inject your authentication into the header that the server (which so far hasnt authenticated which will give you a 401 error and the trackback will not work)

Hope that helps some people that may have been trying to find the solution to either of those problems. :)

Thanks for sharing the solution!