"ping" IP with PERL?

If your running a large website, and you want to do statistics I'd look at the access logs of the web server
All web servers I know of, provide the ability to capture the remote address of a user in access logs.

If you wish to restrict users based upon IP again use your webserver for it, such as apaches'
 allow from ....
in it's config file.

But other than that if your just using it for informational or actual processing purposes the jmcg is correct!

p

I haven't had a chance yet to try jmcg's suggestion, but I was wondering, pjaol, if you could explain in more detail why its not good to use $ENV{REMOTE_ADDR} to do statistics or to restrict users based on IP?

I can't speak for Pjaol, but in general the reason to avoid writing your own Perl code for statistics gathering or access control is that it requires careful coding to get these things right in a CGI script (both to get them right so they do what you expect and also to get them so they don't do something bad when a user plays games with your script). The facilities already provided by the webserver for these functions should be preferred whenever possible.

Kesea, have you abandoned this question?

I see Ceppe has tried to answer the question you apparently were asking  in your question title rather than the question we thought you were asking in the question body.

If you're not happy with any of the answers, you can go to Community Support and ask that your points be refunded. I'd suggest that you request the moderators PAQ this question rather than delete it, since it contains answers that others with similar questions could benefit from in the future.