Introduction
------------
This module enables you to use a SOCKS server.  Look at the example
program named "example" to see how to use the module.  This version
(0.02) only implements SOCKS 4.  A SOCKS 5 implementation is
in the works and will be included in this module at some point
in the future.

Installing
----------
To install, do the usual "perl Makefile.PL ; make ; make test ; make install".
It's okay when pod2man complains about lines with ">" in it.

Future Plans
------------
Planned for the next release:
  - Something to make this easy to integrate into Graham Barr's libnet module.

  - Move SOCKS v4 implementation into Net::SOCKS::v4.  
    Net::SOCKS(protocol_version => 4, ...) will return a reference
    to a Net::SOCKS::v4 object at that point.

Note
----
For those not familar with SOCKS, one should note that 
setting up a SOCKS client to listen on the network 
is slightly different than normal.  The main differences
are:

  - The SOCKS client can not pick an arbitrary port
    number to listen on.  Instead, the SOCKS server
    picks the port number (and the ip address) of
    the service that will listen.  The SOCKS server
    tells the client so it can notify the connecting
    application where to connect to.

  - The SOCKS client must tell the SOCKS server
    the ip address and port number of the TCP client
    that will connect to the service.  The SOCKS
    server optionally checks that the incoming
    connection request actually does come from that
    ip address and port number.

For these reasons, it is a bit hard to use (and write) a SOCKS module
as a plug-in replacement for Net::Socket.  I'm still thinking
of how to make it easier for programmers to revise current code to
use Net::SOCKS with minimal changes.

Feel free to send me any comments, questions, or suggestions that you have.

Cheers,
Clinton Wong <clintdw@netcom.com>
December 28, 1997