Instead of using the shared flag would it be better to use Thread::Queue::Monitored as I have found that the array loading is pretty much a drag and am thinking of spawning the threads, loading the ips directly to the queues and at the end of the queing fire off a series of exit commands equal to the threads waiting.

I am trying it now and hopefully have some code soon as an example, but was just curious if you had tried it?

Update:
It appears that Thread::Queue::Monitored only sets up one thread to Monitor the queue which I am going to try to use as the back end process to get the results of the pings instead of trying to shove them into the array. Have the Monitored Queue do the db processing.