IO::Socket is no help at all, since I want the code to be portable across our intranet: Our elderly HP box seems to have a problem with getprotobyname() function (I donīt know why and I canīt do anything about that), so the whole IO::Socket module doesnīt work there. See sample below.
Iīll play around with setsockopt() now. It should help, for otherwise there seems to be a serious flaw in the whole (Perl?) socket stuff: What if I donīt know anything about those 30s on the other side? <sigh>Iīve got 3 bright Perl books, each having a section on sockets, but none saying anything about the use of setsockopt() ... </sigh>

Thanks for your help!
--Martin

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use IO::Socket;

$sock = new IO::Socket::INET (PeerAddr => 'www.perlmonks.org', PeerPor
+t => 80, Proto => 'tcp');
die "Mess: $!" unless $sock;
[download]

results is:
IO::Socket::INET: Cannot determine protocol at ./test.pl line 5
Mess: Bad file number at ./test.pl line 6.