DBI connect timeout question

I'm using DBI to write a monitoring program for our informix servers. Problem I am running into is that if the database server (to which I am always connecting via a tcp connection) is down completely, the connect() takes a very long time before it returns. The same server in quiescent mode returns quite quickly, as expected. My question: Is there a parameter or other setting that can be used to have the connect return more quickly, i.e. some sort of timeout value? I tried using an alarm(), but the connect appear to ignore the alarm. Thanks, Dave