Further Reading on Networking

There's a lot more to networking than this, but this should get you started. of Perl Developing and the perlipc (1) manpage describe interprocess communication in general; the IO::Socket (3) manpage describes the object library; and the Socket (3) manpage describes the low-level interface to sockets. For the more intrepid developers, the tutorial Unix Network Developing by Richard Stevens (published by Addison-Wesley) covers the entire topic quite well. Be warned, however, that most texts on socket developing are written from the perspective of a C developer.