Truth be told, the periodic problems with cpan.org are what led to the addition of the [kobe://] tag, which does pretty much what you asked for. It behaves like the [cpan://] tag only it triggers a search on the University of Winnipeg's mirror instead.

I chose to use a separate tag in hopes that cpan.org would eventually get things worked out. Until then, I've been trying to post links like this:

Perhaps MIME::Lite (alt) would help.

FWIW, the [kobe://] tag was announced in this node, along with a few others. (And, yes, the documentation has recently been updated.)

--f

P.S. Yes, the guy's name is Kobes. There was an accident involving email and a pair of editorial scissors. Shouldn't have run with them. Sorry.)

P.P.S. I'm a bit surprised no one mentioned it earlier in the thread. What's up with that?