Unfortunately you're not going to be able to guarantee a proxy's functionality unless you actually use it to access something.
If you're doing your connections on a periodic basis, I think you just need to keep a list of possibilities and send yourself alerts to refresh the list if it hits some low threshold as you drop non-responding proxies from the pool.
Update: Wording updates. Remove syllogism.
non-Perl: Andy Ford
In reply to Re: Testing proxy "health"
by andyford
in thread Testing proxy "health"
by hacker
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