in reply to FTP vs. SFTP and perl v5.6.1

Ummm... yes.

Why would you think that you would not be able to use it?

As an aside, using Net::Sftp is a much better idea than using Net::Ftp wherever possible. FTP employs plain-text authentication, which is inherently very insecure. The entire session is encrypted over an Sftp connection (it is part of ssh) and hence is quite secure.