If you want to test the net link (the syntax will differ on Windoze) :

my @a=`ping -s 1024 $servertotest -c 10`;
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Then some parsing (wonderful regexes) could give you the round trip time and packet loss
which could be a good way to test connectivity between your script and the 3 servers...

Now you'll probably have to get the servers load too, to make the best choice.

UPDATE :

Here is the parsing code for my box (it's "ping output dependant" ;-)

$a[$#a-1]=~/.*?(\d+)%.*/;  # Get the Packet loss near the %
my $pl=$1;
my $rtt=(split'/',(split'=',$a[$#a])[1])[1];  # get the average Round 
+trip time
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