pg, you've solved my problem, thanks a lot. I see how its done now, before I was using a loop like: while (sysread($handle, $byte, 1) == 1) { print; } to receive every byte, as the server sent no line feeds or other control characters to seperate its messages. It simply sends them as individual tcp packet's - i found this out using Ethereal (packet sniffer). Thanks to everyone to replied.