I just read about this in Network Programming with Perl. It's written by Lincoln Stein (the author of CGI.PM). You can find out more about the book at his site.

There's a sample script that deals with your issue by using fork. Check it out here

The book rocks, btw. If you're writing network-related code in Perl, it's an excellent resource.

Sorry about the duplicate post. Posting at 3:30am is not a good idea. :(