Hi, I'm sure you must have already sorted out this issue by this time. But I just wanted to share my problem too here, so others can have this information. Also, please share your solution on this issue. I had the similar issue with LWP.UserAgent complaining "bad hostname" for whatever the host we give irrespective of the proxy url setup on the agent. All the hosts works just fine when we access them in the browser. We get response to nslookup and ping for all the hosts. Strange thing is that (my script) same script worked just fine when I tried with v5.8.8 and tomcat apache on solaris. But the same script fails when I use ActivePerl on windows xp. I tried to google for the solution and possible causes of this issue, but no luck :( My solution: I tried the same script in one of my friend's desktop where he was using apache instead of tomcat apache with the same ActivePerl. It just worked fine. So, I too ended up in installing and using apache instead of tomcat apace which worked well for me too. If somebody has more information on this issue and a resolution for this, please share! Thanks A PERL newbie!