I would also try the Net::Ping module and use a defined timeout. Here is an example.

use strict;
use Net::Ping;

use constant TIMEOUT => 1;

my $mNetPing = Net::Ping->new('icmp',TIMEOUT);

foreach ('host1', 'host2', '172.20.41.152')
{
  print $_,($mNetPing->ping($_) ? ' is alive' : ' is not alive'),"\n";
}

$mNetPing->close();
[download]