What are you doing on the remote server? If you are just running a non interactive program, then I would use Net::Telnet. If they are programs that need interactive responses, then Expect is probably what you want. I usually ssh to a server and run a command with a system() call.

I probably should clarify that, I create a command like,

   my $cmd = q[ssh hostname -l foo 'ls bar'];
   die $! if system($cmd);
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sth