Well, generally, the client writes the request to the server, then waits for a response from the server. So, in the client:

print $server "FOO request\n";

my $response = <$server>;
# or my $bytes_read = read($server, $response, 4192);
# or whatever--basically, just read from the server
[download]

And the server accepts connections, reads the requests, handles them, then sends back data:

my $client = $server->accept;
my $request = <$client>;
# do something with the request
# generate a response
print $client $response;
close $client;
[download]

This is very dumbed-down, but it gets across the general idea, I think. Is that what you were asking?