If you just need a way to telnet from Perl, Net::Telnet works nicely. Here's a simple example that logs into my redback and prints out its version info.

#!/usr/bin/perl 

use Net::Telnet;
use strict;

my $hostname = "redback";
my $username = "admin";
my $passwd   = "password";

# Instantiate the telnet object
my $router  = new Net::Telnet (
        Prompt => '/.*>$/'
);

# Open the connection
$router->open($hostname);

# Log in
$router->login($username, $passwd);

# Get some info
my @version = $router->cmd('show version');

# Close the connection
$router->close();

# Print the output
print @version;

# EOF
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- Matt