8.1. Introduction - pick the right abstraction level

When trying to connect some network device using Perl you have a number of choices.

See the full stack of HTTP connections:

• built in socket function and the Socket module

• IO::Socket::INET using IO::Socket

• Net::Telnet, Net::FTP, Net::SSH (wrapping ssh), Net::SSH::Perl, Net::*

• LWP::Simple, LWP

• WWW::Mechanize

• WWW::GMail

At the lowest level you can use the built in socket function.

Using the Socket library provides several extra functions
and constants that will make your code cleaner and more portable.

See also perlipc