Further to this, when you do need to use Net::SSLeay (such as when writing an SSL capable network server) there are already modules which quite capably abstract the SSL part of the communications (eg: IO::Socket::SSL, HTTP::Daemon::SSL, etc).

Pretty much the only time you need to use Net::SSLeay directly is when you're doing something strange like:

• being specific about SSL versions and capabilities (partially covered in IO::Socket::SSL),
• verifying peer certificates and other certificates in their chain-of-trust (partially covered in IO::Socket::SSL),
• implementing non-standard extensions to SSL.

I find Net::SSLeay most useful for its documentation of the SSL related options (most of which can be used by IO::Socket::SSL and LWP through Crypt::SSLeay).

-David