I'm not sure what version has what limitations but you can easily integrate cURL into the engine. I just modified the libcurl source to include engine bindings and i call its functions using curl guides.
check it out at: http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/

The engine also uses libcurl for its http functions anyway, acknet is built with it statically.

I can share the project if you need it when I have some time.