You probably need to use IO::Select, and the alarm too. Take a look in this example for select, to see how to use it. This example show how to read in the same time 2 sockets, without stop another:

#!/usr/bin/perl

  ## Open the 2 socket connections:

  my $sock1 = new IO::Socket::INET(
     PeerAddr => host1 ,
     PeerPort => 6622 ,
     Proto    => 'tcp',
     Timeout  => 30) ;
     
  my $sock2 = new IO::Socket::INET(
     PeerAddr => host2 ,
     PeerPort => 6622 ,
     Proto    => 'tcp',
     Timeout  => 30) ;
     
  ## Crete the interface for select, with the 2 sockets:
  my $can_read = IO::Select->new( $sock1 , $sock2 );
  
  ## File to log the data:
  open (LOG,"./log.txt") ;
  
  ## Here the select interface will return to the array
  ## @has_buf the $sockets with data in the buffer, using
  ## 1s of delay:
  while( my @has_buf = $can_read->can_read(1) ) {
  
     foreach my $has_buf_i ( @has_buf ) {  ## $has_buf_i is one of the
+ sockets
       my $buffer ;
       
       ## Create another select to can read byte by byte, because
       ## we just know that the socket have data, but not the length:
       my $sel = IO::Select->new($has_buf_i) ;
       
       ## Read byte by byte:
       while( $sel->can_read(0.1) ) {
         sysread($has_buf_i, $buffer , 1 , length($buffer) ) ;
       }
       
       ## Print to the log file:
       if ($buffer ne '') { print LOG $buffer ;}
     }
     
  }

exit;
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