#! perl -slw
use strict;
use Time::HiRes qw[ time ];
use LWP;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->timeout( 0.1 );

print time;
my $response = $ua->get('http://192.168.1.31/noexist.html');
print time;

if ($response->is_success) {
    print $response->decoded_content;  # or whatever
}
else {
    die $response->status_line;
}

__END__
C:\test>junk76
1301504675.567
1301504675.74173
500 Can't connect to 192.168.1.31:80 (connect: timeout) at C:\test\junk76.pl line 17.