I've never found any lack of "control" using IO::Socket. To my mind, it is one of the best pieces of abstraction on CPAN. Simple, lightweight and very effective.

Several years ago, I did experiment with creating socket code by hand, and mostly succeeded in get what I set out to do to work. But each time I tried something new, I would re-encounter the same problems and misunderstandings, and inevitably, I would return to the IO::Socket::INET source code to resolve them.

IO::Socket programs "just work", and so far have never proved to be limiting. That is the very essence of a good module. It may have some limitations, but I haven't encountered them.