net socket request never arrives

I have the following code snippet:

var options = { host:"192.168.0.113", port:8823 };		
var socket = require("net").connect( options, function() {
       socket.on('data', function(data) {
            console.log("HTTP> "+data);
       } );
} );
socket.end( JSON.stringify( obj ) );		
console.log( 'should be sent by now' );

Upon running, the server does not receive any data.

I tried also socket.write( JSON.stringify( obj ) ) and putting write/end calls inside of the callback function - neither worked.

The test code in Groovy works just fine:

Socket s = new Socket()
s.connect( new InetSocketAddress( "192.168.0.113", 8823 ) )
s.outputStream.withWriter{ it << 'aaaaa' }