Hello brother monks,
I am seeking wisdom on how one might use IO::Socket as a Proxy server. I have looked at HTTP::Proxy and tested it. It runs beautifully, and I applaud Philippe Bruhat for his module. Unfortunately, I can't modify his stuff easily to fit my needs, since I am only a simple minded monk.
I have borrowed code from some forums to slap together a proxy server using IO::Socket, but it is not acceptable on the performance side. Basically, it has: a server running that accepts incoming connections from a client. Then, I want it to use the incoming information to connect to the server within the request sent in. I basically want to match exactly what the client browser is sending to the server and forward that on to the actual server providing the content. Here is what I have started with. I thank whoever the author is, wherever you are. The code, though, seems extremely slow and most requests from a client leave the browser hanging indefinitely.
Any help would be most appreciated. I mainly want to speed things up and understand why the code is causing the browser to hang. I know there needs to be more control on the detached threads, too, so the system doesn't spawn too many of them. Since it only is using IO::Socket for the connections (server and client), I figured this would make a pretty fast proxy. Thank you in advance for any help!

#!/usr/bin/perl

  use strict;
  use warnings;
  use URI;
  use IO::Socket;
  use threads('yield', 'stack_size' => 64*4096);

  my $plog_file = "/tmp/passthrough_proxy.log";

  # don't want to die on 'Broken pipe' or Ctrl-C
  $SIG{PIPE} = 'IGNORE';

  my $showOpenedSockets=1;

  my $proxy = IO::Socket::INET->new (
   LocalAddr => '192.168.0.5',
   LocalPort => 7070,
   Type => SOCK_STREAM,
   Reuse => 1,
   Listen => SOMAXCONN,
   #Timeout => 10,
  ) or die "\n\nABORTING START:\n\tCan not open proxy socket on port 7070\n\n";

  binmode $proxy;

  while (my $client = $proxy->accept()) {
   plog("\n\n----Accepted Connection--------\n");

   binmode $client;
   my $t = threads->new(\&fetch, $client);
   $t->detach;
   }

sub fetch{

  my $browser = $_[0];
  my $method ="";
  my $content_length = 0;
  my $content = 0;
  my $accu_content_length = 0;
  my $host;
  my $hostAddr;
  my $httpVer;

  while (my $browser_line = <$browser>) {
   plog("Browser Line: $browser_line");
   if( $browser_line =~ /^Proxy-Connection:/i   ){
  plog("\tThrowing out Browser line due to identifying Proxy\n");
  next;
  }
  unless ($method) {
  ($method, $hostAddr, $httpVer) = $browser_line =~ /^(\w+) +(\S+) +(\S+)/;

  plog("$hostAddr");
  my $uri = URI->new($hostAddr) or print "Could not build URI for $hostAddr";

  $host = IO::Socket::INET->new (
  PeerAddr=> $uri->host,
  PeerPort=> $uri->port,
  Timeout=> 10,
  ) or die "couldn't open $hostAddr" unless $host;

  if ($showOpenedSockets) {
  plog("\n\tOpened ".$uri->host." , port ".$uri->port."\n");
  }

  binmode $host;

  print $host "$method ".$uri->path_query." $httpVer\n";
  plog("$method ".$uri->path_query." $httpVer\n");
  next;
  }

  $content_length = $1 if ( $browser_line=~/Content-length: +(\d+)/i );
  $accu_content_length+=length $browser_line;

  print $host $browser_line;

  last if $browser_line =~ /^\s*$/ and $method ne 'POST';
  if ($browser_line =~ /^\s*$/ and $method eq "POST") {
   $content = 1;
   last unless $content_length;
   next;
   }
  if ($content) {
  $accu_content_length+=length $browser_line;
  last if $accu_content_length >= $content_length;
  }
}
  plog("\n\nThread id --> ".threads->self->tid()."\n");
  plog("No of. threads at present --> ".threads->list()."\n");
  plog("Stack size --> ".threads->get_stack_size()."\n");

  $content_length = 0;
  $content = 0;
  $accu_content_length = 0;
  while (my $host_line = <$host>) {
   print $browser $host_line;
   $content_length = $1 if $host_line=~/Content-length: +(\d+)/i;
   if ( length($host_line) < 1 ){
   close($host);
   last;
   }
  if ($host_line =~ m/^\s*$/ and not $content) {
  $content = 1;
  #last unless $content_length;
  #close($host); #Let's see if we can force a close on no returned info
  next;
  }
  if ($content) {
   if ($content_length) {
   $accu_content_length+=length $host_line;
   #print "\nContent Length: $content_length, accu: $accu_content_length\n";
   last if $accu_content_length >= $content_length;
   }
   }
  }
  $browser-> close;
  $host -> close;

  plog("---- End thread ----> ID: ".threads->self->tid()."\n");
  }

sub plog{
  my $msg = $_[0];
  open(LOG,">>$plog_file") or warn "Can NOT open $plog_file for appending\n\tREASON: $!\n\n";
  if ( ! $msg=~ /\n$/ ){
   $msg = $msg . "\n";
   }
  print LOG $msg;
  close(LOG);
  }