Net::openssh is a secure shell client package implemented on top of the openssh binary client (ssh), leveraging the multiplexing feature found in current versions of openssh. that is, when a new net::openssh object is created, ssh is run in master mode establishing a permanent connection. then, every time a new operation is requested, a new ssh process is started in slave mode, reusing the master ssh connection to send the request to the remote side. this makes net::openssh very fast, as most of the latency of ssh is intrinsic to the protocol.

if you like the api of other perl ssh distributions like net::ssh, net::ssh2 or net::ssh::perl, and would like to use them with net::openssh, have a look at the libnet-openssh-compat-perl package.