@INC is an array containing a list of directories perl will search when you ask it to load a module via use or require. perlvar has much more.

Strawberry ships with cpanm use this to install modules, it's considerably faster than cpan:

cpanm Catalyst::Devel
[download]

If this fails you may have to configure it to cater for firewalls or special networking considerations. See the cpanm documentation.

When installing with cpan/cpanm modules and their dependency trees are downloaded, tested and installed. You should be able to cancel the process by pressing ctrl+c.