CPAN Perl Module Installation Issues

While installing some perl modules I came across this warning, and installation was aborted. The problem wasn't related to Perl or CPAN but interestingly it was my wifi connection. (I was working on my laptop connected to UAB wifi.)

Warning: Your /root/.cpan/sources/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz does not contain a Line-Count header.
Warning: Your /root/.cpan/sources/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz does not contain a Last-Updated header.
Please check the validity of the index file by comparing it to more than one CPAN mirror. I'll continue but problems seem likely to happen.
Use of uninitialized value in string ne at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN.pm line 
Catching error: 'Can\'t use string ("CPAN::Index") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" in use at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN.pm 
Lockfile removed.
Can't use string ("CPAN::Index") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" in use at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN.pm 

After checking contents of this file (/root/.cpan/sources/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz), I found UAB wirless network login page rather than the package list. Not surprisingly it didn't have the metadata cpan was loking for. I was disconnected from the wifi and had to login again (may be session expired?). I just deleted this package file and went again into cpan shell. Everything went smooth afterwards.