I curious about what OS your running on.

The reason being that I'm new to IO::Socket module
programing as well and ran into several problems while
looking at the recommeded sources.

It took going through several examples and combining what I
saw as "good" programing practices to come up with a
version that works on my win32 platform.

So once you understand the basics of IO::Socket (which your
on you way with the inital code you've written. Then
look at these two examples.

http://pleac.sourceforge.net/pleac_perl/sockets.html

http://www.perlfect.com/articles/select.shtml

Also, here was my problem, but it was pretty complex at this point. I'm handing a nonforking server that supports nonblocking IO.

http://www.perlmonks.com/index.pl?node_id=159578

Good Luck,
mslattery