There's nothing wrong with a good old refresh... just remember that the META tag is a way to insert data that should be treated as a header when you don't have the capability to insert a true header. Since you're writing CGI scripts, just add a real Refresh header that looks something like this:

my $refresh_header = "Refresh: 0; URL=http://example.com/nextpage.cgi\
+n";
[download]

This is perfectly correct and results in a new request with a particular delay. Unlike a traditional redirect, most browsers will *not* attempt to rePOST data (which they technically shouldn't do anyway, IIRC).

That's not the problem the poster is having, though. He's writing a client.

--isotope