Hi Anonymous Monk,

Internally, IO::Socket uses non-blocking i/o with regard to timeouts. I would specify an integer for the timeout period since I didn't see where it was passed in via a form. Something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT

use strict;
use CGI qw( :standard );
use IO::Socket;

my $client = IO::Socket::INET->new
    (
        PeerAddr => $clientIP,
        PeerPort => $clientPort,
        Proto    => "tcp",
        Type     => SOCK_STREAM,
        Timeout  => 10
    );
    
$client or die $@, "\n";


#Remainder of code...
[download]

If the connection occurs within the alloted time frame, the IO::Socket obj. is returned and saved in $client. If not, the error will be stored in $@ with the error message "IO::Socket::INET:Operation now in progress".
Hope this helps,
-Katie.