For some reason this code hangs for few seconds when accessing images from urls. I sped up html requests by watching for other signs that I was at the end of the data stream. What am I missing? Is there a way to speed up the socket closure after it is done reading?

#!perl
use strict;
use Socket;
my $url="http://www.cpan.org/misc/jpg/cpan.jpg";
my $host="www.cpan.org";
$|=1;
my $start=times;
my ( $iaddr, $paddr, $proto );
$iaddr   = inet_aton( $host );
$paddr   = sockaddr_in( 80, $iaddr );
$proto   = getprotobyname( 'tcp' );
unless( socket( SOCK, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $proto ) ) {die "ERROR Dud
+e: getUrl socket: $!";}
unless( connect( SOCK, $paddr ) ) {die "getUrl connect: $!\n";}
my @head=(
    "GET $url HTTP/1.1",
    "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.78 [en] (X11; U; Safemode Linux i386)",
    "Pragma: no-cache",
    "Host: $host",
    "Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, imag
+e/png, */*",
    "Accept-Language: en"
    );
push(@head,"","");

#Build Header and print to socket
my $header=join("\015\012",@head);
print "sending request\n$header\n\n";
select SOCK; 
$| = 1;
binmode SOCK;
print SOCK $header;
my $body='';
while( <SOCK> ) { 
    my $data=$_;
    $data=~s/[\r\n\t]+$//s;
    $data=~s/^[\r\n\t]+//s;
    last if $data=~/^0$/s;
    my $len=length($data);
    #print STDOUT "len:$len\n";
    $body .= $data; 
    last if $data=~/\<\/html\>$/is;
    if($data=~/\<\/body\>$/is){
        $body .= qq|</html>|;
        last;
        }
    #print STDOUT "$data\n";
    }
unless( close( SOCK ) ) {
    return ( "getUrl close: $!" );
    }
select STDOUT;
close SOCK;
my $end=times;
my $diff=$end=$start;
print "Took $diff to access page\n";
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