I believe I read somewhere that the timeout in the IO::Socket::INET or whatever doesn't apply to the connection, although I could be mixing my dim perldoc memories.

UPDATE: I'm right-ish see bottom of post

So, I have cobbled something out of LWP::ParallelUserAgent, where in the depths of the code, he uses a construct (shown below), there is an equivalent can_read (perldoc IO::Select) method, and these actually give working timeouts if the server / network is AWOL on my system at least

 eval { die if !$sockout->can_write( $TIMEOUT ) };
#-- or :
 eval {
        local $SIG{'__WARN__'} = sub { };      #---- ignore warnings i
+n the eval 
        $fd = new IO::Socket::INET( PeerAddr => $details{'server'}, 
                                    PeerPort => $details{'port'}, 
                                    Proto    => 'tcp') or die $@;
    };
 
    if ($@) {                                       #---- connect fail
+ed
        $log->write('TRACE', "Can't connect TCP $@ \n") if $out;
    } else {
        my $sel  = IO::Select->new( $fd );          #---- for timeout
        eval { die if !$sel->can_write( $TIMEOUT ) };
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UPDATE : knew I'd read it somewhere

Found it: pp 114 Chapter 5 IO::Socket API, Lincoln Stein book

$val->timeout($timeout);
timeout() gets or sets the timeout value that IO::Socket uses for its connect and accept methods. (snip). The timeout value is not currently used for calls that send or recieve data...