You should go to the Code Catacombs on perlmonks, and check out the Networking code section. I have one using Net::EasyTCP, which has passwords etc. But a nice simple one is by Anarion called netcat-w-blowfish

There is also alot of code in the Snippets section. The C version of netcat is usually used as a standard app for doing this. Search for netcat on google.