Although it may not have a bearing on your current problem, you might want to consider doing more error checking on your telnet commands. It's helped with several problems I've encountered:

 . . . . . . . . 

## after login attempt
my $msg = $telnet->errmsg;
die "A system error was generated on login attempt:\n   '$msg'\n\n" if
+ $msg;

 . . . . . . . .

## after command is issued
my @lines = $telnet->cmd("sh time");
my $msg = $telnet->errmsg;
die "An error occurred on cmd 'sh time':\n   '$msg'\n\n" if $msg;
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HTH.

--Jim