If you've mastered the examples in the IO::Socket documentation, you might want to go the easy route of prepackaged server models, as Net::Server has it.

The documentation claims that Net::Server implements many server models as subclasses, inetd-style servers, single-process (forking or singleton) servers and even preforking servers (like Apache). I don't know how accessible the module is to somebody who dosen't have much experience with writing his own server though. The Net::Server framework is also relatively fresh, this might be another obstacle you want to avoid. On Perlmonks there also are some small server implementations, I'll plug mine : here