Websocket messages mysteriously disappear - windows

Question

I'm going crazy trying to figure out what's wrong with my system that it is unable to send websocket messages. I've tried a ton of things:
Chrome 32, firefox 27, ie 10
various websocket server libraries: ws, websocket, nodejs-websocket
running the server on windows and centos
reinstalling node.js (to version 0.10.26)
reinstalling firefox
Turning off my firewall
The behavior is always the same: both client and server say they get a connection, but when the client tries to send a message, the other one simply doesn't get it. Sometimes i get "Error: read ECONNRESET" on the server - but not all the time. About 50% of the time it just fails silently. Eventually the connection closes.
If I add code to send a message from the server on connection, it always gets "Error: read ECONNRESET".
What does work?
the exact same code and setup on my laptop
any websocket code online, for example this: http://www.websocket.org/echo.html
So what could cause just my local websocket connection to silently drop messages?
Server:
var
ws = require('websocket').server
var http = require('http')
var server = http.createServer(function(request, response) {
console.log("connection received for "+request.url)
response.writeHead(404)
response.end()
})
server.listen(8080, function() {
console.log("now listening")
})
wsServer = new ws({httpServer:server, autoAcceptConnections: false})
wsServer.on('request', function(request) {
console.log("got request")
var connection = request.accept('a', request.origin)
console.log("got connection")
connection.on('message', function(message) {
console.log("got message: "+message)
})
connection.on("close", function() {
console.log("closed")
})
connection.on('error', function(e) {
console.log('Error: '+e)
})
})
Output:
got connection
closed
Client:
<script>
var ws = new WebSocket('ws://localhost:8080/', 'a')
ws.onopen = function() {
console.log('open')
ws.send('something2')
}
ws.onerror = function(e) {
console.log(e)
}
ws.onmessage = function(m) {
console.log(m)
}
ws.onclose = function() {
console.log('closed')
}
</script>
Output
open
closed
This is driving me crazy.