Glad to have helped--but I'm not sure if I can be of much further help. All I know of your problem is what I've just read as a result of your mentioning ISO-8583.

How can I force the socket NOT to send header information? The Base24-eps trace log is capturing the header info sent by the socket and junking my iso8583 messages.

I think you may have some quite deep misunderstandings of what you are dealing with. (Or they could just be my misunderstandings! Consider yourself warned:)

Sockets don't "send header information". Tcpip wraps data sent via sockets into 'packets', which include headers that carry your IP. But there is no way to turn these off, because without them, your data would never reach its destination. Consider those wrappers like the envelope in which you put a note to your mother: "Dear Mum, I won't be home until friday. Love Naija". Post that note in a postbox without an envelope carrying your mother's address, and there's no way she's ever going to get it.

But the point is, you don't need to prevent the headers being transmitted, because they will be stripped away by the tcpip stack at the other end, before your server ever sees them!.

I think the reason your "Base24-eps trace log" (which you alternatly referred to as "the runtrc log" in a /msg), is because whatever that tool is, it is running at one level (or more) below the socket layer of the tcpip stack on the server. Essentially, you are looking in the wrong place to see what your server is actually receiving via the socket at it's end.

It would be useful (ie. might get you more responses from those that know), if you posted the (few lines) of code where you first construct, and then send the packet to the server. This might allow someone to diagnose your problem further.

As an aside, if you are not already locked in to Perl for the work you are doing, you might consider using another language. At the bottom of the wikipedia page I linked above, there is a list of links to language binding to ISO-8583, unfortunately Perl is conspicuous by its absence. But python, Ruby and PHP all show up there, along with the heavyweights of Java and .NET

Alternatively, if you have the skills, or the money to purchase them, you might consider writing a Perl wrapper package around the OSS C implementation listed there, and contribute it to CPAN so other Perlers don't face the same dilemma.