One obvious test would be to install a different webserver on another port (e.g. thttpd running on port 81) and see if that also has the same problem. If it does then it looks like the issue is not with the webserver part.

It seems unlikely to be caused by perl - but you could write a very simple shell script to do the same thing as your trivial perl script and see if it also fails.

Another alternative would be to run one of the POE Cookbook web servers with the trivial modification so that they always deiver the page you are asking for.

If you think this could be caused by being under load then "wget" is a very simple but effective way to hammer a server.

Dingus