There are some really good examples in the Perl CookBook that certainly help me out with a similar problem. I would suggest sticking to one socket programming method. I like IO::Socket and it's pretty easy to handle.

Something that can really screw you is buffering. Make sure you turn buffering off for your script and flush your sockets when your done writting to them. Another advantage of IO::Socket(::INET) is that autoflush() is an option (and it's turned on my default). Good luck.