I faced the same issue on Windows , cpan was throwing the same error messages . I would recommend following things when configuring http_proxy setting . 1. Never modify the CPAN/config.pm module instead modify the local copy present in C:/Users/user_name/APPData/local. 2. Configure Environment variable http_proxy properly. Key : http_proxy value : http://proxy_address:port 3. Even after setting the proxy env if it doesnt work try deleting the local copy of config.pm , it might have been miss configured.