Perl Cookbook

Chapter 18. Internet Services

Introduction

This “telephone” has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of commmunication. The device is inherently of no value to us.

—Western Union internal memo, 1876

Correct use of sockets is only part of network communicating programs. Once you have a way for two programs to talk, you still need a protocol for communication. This protocol lets each party know when to talk, and it precisely defines who is responsible for which part of the service.

Common Internet protocols are:

Protocol	Meaning	Action
FTP	File Transfer Protocol	Copying files between remote machines
telnet		Remote login
rsh and rcp	Remote shell and Remote copy	Remote login and remote file copying
NNTP	Network News Transfer Protocol	Reading and posting USENET news
HTTP	Hypertext Transfer Protocol	Transferring documents on the Web
SMTP	Simple Mail Transfer Protocol	Sending mail
POP3	Post Office Protocol	Reading mail

Even something as relatively simple as connecting to a remote computer requires intricate negotiations between client and server and has numerous dynamically configurable options. If you had to write the Perl code to implement these protocols each time you wanted to use a network service, you’d probably end up writing a lot of buggy programs, try to get demoted into a management position, or both.

Fortunately, CPAN has modules for these protocols. Most modules implement the client side of the protocol rather than the server side. ...