Making async tcp connections from rails

[snacktime]

So I've never really found a solution I like for making async tcp connections from inside a running rails app, and was curious if anyone else has had any luck.  When running fairly large scale rails apps we always end up needing this.  The only thing I've tried so far that really works is to run an eventmachine reactor inside rails.  Anyone have experience with Neverblock?  Haven't tried that yet.  Revactor looks like it hasn't gotten any love in quite a while.  There is a non blocking http library based on curl out there we tried (can't remember the name), but it had some issues we never resolved.

Chris