I spent a few hours and finally found this paramater you can pass to the IO::Socket::INET ... Timeout => Ex: my $sock = new IO::Socket::INET ( LocalPort => '1401', Proto => 'tcp', Listen => 1, Reuse => 1, Blocking => 0, Timeout => .1, ); After .1 seconds it times out the accept command and continues on through your loop happily. As an added benefit this helps you prevent race conditions.

Originally posted as a Categorized Answer.