You'll probably want to check out Win32::NetResource module and some of its functions: NetShareAdd(), NetShareCheck(), NetShareDel(), NetShareGetInfo() and NetShareSetInfo(). I have never used these modules before but they appear from the brief descriptions given in Perl in a Nutshell to do what you ask (including password authentication).

My previous post was based on the assumption that authentication to any necessary network resources had been established via manual network login/mapping/etc. HTH,

--Jim

Update: I did some experimentation at this node and grep determined that it appears Win32::NetResource only runs on NT platforms. crazyinsomniac noted the fact is not in the perldocs for that module.