Even though Perl has support for low-level socket programming, that doesn’t mean that you have to program at the low-level. For common protocols such as FTP, HTTP, POP3, or SMTP, you can use modules that come with Perl to handle the transport details. libnet, the distribution that comprises the basic protocols, comes with Perl since 5.8. Many other protocols, such as SSH, have implementations on CPAN. You can also install from CPAN many higher level libraries, such as LWP and WWW::Mechanize. Continue reading “Know when and when not to write networking code.”