Yeah, I did that. That's how I determined that the problem was with IO::Select::INET and not with anything else. My test code was:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use IO::Select::INET;

my $sock = IO::Select::INET->new(
  PeerAddr => '(host)',  # where host is some host I knew
  PeerPort => 'ftp(21)', # or http(80) or whatever
  Proto    => 'tcp'
);

print defined $sock ? 'Connected!' : $@, "\n";
exit 0;
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And then again with Timeout => 0 and Timeout => 120. It was successful on all of them except for Timeout => 120, which it failed to connect (and not after 120 seconds).

Might I add to this that the reason IO::Socket::INET is giving for not creating the socket (as returned by $@) is 'IO::Socket::INET: Timeout'. Since I can connect when no Timeout is specified, I think I've at least narrowed it down to a problem within the module and not something en route causing a connection failure.