Forking does not seem to be the optimal solution to this. I would prefer to set a handler for SIGALRM and set an alarm, something like.

$SIG{ALRM} = sub { die ("Couldn't traceroute"); };
alarm (20);
if ($tracert = `traceroute "$ip"`)
{
    alarm (0);
}
# handle data from traceroute here
[download]

This is documented in the perlipc perldoc.

1. dude, what does mine say?
2. "sweet", what about mine?
3. "dude", what does mine say?
4. GOTO 2