An alternative would be to use LWP under mod_perl. If you are only testing one http request, you may not notice a difference. But if you are doing several in a loop, Mod_perl is worth the time to install and run. I timed a HTTP request for 500 static html pages on my RHL server with a perl script. Without mod_perl, it took me 39.25 seconds to request 500 pages. With mod_perl, it took 3.34 seconds.
I saved 36 seconds with mod_perl.