net socket request never arrives

@Kolban thanks for the answer!

1. Previously I had socket.on( 'close', .. ) and it was not invoked.

2. I inserted require("ESP8266").logDebug(true); but no additional console output appeared...

3. I can't really use ping, as the server doesn't provide any ICMP ports and so the code:

   require("ESP8266").ping( '192.168.0.113', function( p ){ console.log( 'ping', p ); } );
   

prints out:

=undefined
ping { "totalCount": 0, "totalBytes": 0, "totalTime": 0, "respTime": 0,
"seqNo": 0, "timeoutCount": 0, "bytes": 0, "error": -1 }