Maybe you are working on a Marine Satellite network? </joke>

Fletch's humor notwithstanding, rsync is preferable to scp.

General advice: This adivce applies to any unix command line utility: You must first try at the command line after you read the man page.

Second, once the command works on the commmand line, then wrap it in a perl system call, with error checking. Add logging and stir gently.

This is not a cake