Well, I had a look at the Net::Telnet Module. After reading just a few lines. It occurred to me that maybe the apparent timeout error, is actually a timeout from a prompt waiting your username, and password. Have you tried the example provided?

    use Net::Telnet ();
    $t = new Net::Telnet (Timeout => 10,
                          Prompt => '/bash\$ $/');
    $t->open($host);
    $t->login($username, $passwd);
    @lines = $t->cmd("who");
    print @lines;
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Appears to me, you're going to have to respond in some manner to the opposite ends prompt for this information. Depending on what sort of system you're logging into, you may even need to set the shell environment.

Best wishes.

--Chris