Yes, I think what you're suggesting sounds like what we should have been doing in the first place. I will look along those lines.

As to the hows, we're doing:

my $pid = open $f, "-|" or exec @cmd; # Where @cmd contains the path to the ssh binary and arguments for the creation of an ongoing tunnel.

Still not sure if I'm giving enough information, but you guys have helped put me on a better track, I think.