no, that way worked for me, too. (but i had a join ',', unpack('C4', @packed_ip); instead of the temp variables.

i wasn't getting the packed data at all, for some reason. the call to  gethostbyname was only returning the first value ( which is name, if all args are requested, but address if called in scalar context according to the docs.)

and, as the update says, now it's working as expected. perl magic - ask someone why things don't work, and they start working! kinda like taking the car to the mechanic. . . :) UPDATE: typo - the join had a dot, not a comma.