Android Poor network performance from 4.4 to 4.4.4

I have a program that runs periodic HTTP mail (every second) on my own web server. The app worked fine on my test Motorola Droid Mini phone running Android 4.4. About three days ago, I allowed one of my test phones to update to Android 4.4.4. Now the request works fine, but every fourth request takes a ridiculous 10 seconds to complete the recording on 4.4.4 phone. The second phone, running 4.4, still works fine.

I have tried using both the HttpPost method in the Apache library and the HttpURLConnection as recommended by google. Both methods work fine under 4.4, but every fourth request hangs for 10 seconds under 4.4.4. (Typically, requests take about 200-400ms.)

For further testing, I set the timeout to 1.5 seconds. The pattern again repeats 3-4 successful post requests, each taking 200-400ms, but instead of the fourth post taking 10 seconds, after three successes, I get 4 exception timeouts until the 5th connection is attempted will end with an expected delay of 200-400ms, so I waited 10 seconds for the fifth connection to complete.

Does anyone know what happened with the 4.4.4 update on the Droid Mini to change the underlying network? As a side note, I am doing all my debugging over Wi-Fi since the phones are not active on 3g. Any thoughts?