Chapter 17 of the "Perl Cookbook" (which should be part of every Perl monks' book shelf) has some good examples of socket programming. There are two main modules, the original (and lowest level) Socket, and a higher level IO::Socket. I think in most cases, IO::Socket will do everything people need, in a simple and easier to code manner.

But as others have suggested, you may find even higher level modules provide what you want. I have used socket programming for simple tasks, and it works like a breeze - just find a suitable example in the cookbook, and adapt that. A word of caution though, your server program will often run with quite a high level of authority. You should also check out any potential security holes, make use of the "taint" facility, and in general, make sure the server does only what you instruct it to.

Ken