Hm... are you using Barr's IO::Socket library? At the corporation where I worked we have learned that the IO::Socket library, although excellent for very light socket work, has a horrible time dealing with error conditions. It would appear like error handling was not thoroughly designed into the infrastrucutre, it feels as if it almost was an afterthought. My suggestion for you, as amazingly horrible as this might sound, is attempt to recreate the problem utilizing more low level socket code (in other words, do the work by hand.) If however i've been wrong all along, and you aren't useing the IO::Socket library, then go the other way, and try it :) Maybe you are forgetting something that needed to be done (an fflush here, an fflush there, here an fflush, there an fflush, everywhere an fflush.) Sorry I couldn't be more helpful, but without more of a description of the problem domain, that's as close as we are going to get :)