morning, pasting in the code from the code I'm working off of. Error msg is at line 42 (pattern match) >> $session->login(Name => $username, Password => $userpassword); YOUR suggestion relates to line 41 and that reads Timeout uses the scalar of $secs....which I've tried to manipulate. thank you for the comeback. $secs = 30; my $session = Net::Telnet::Cisco->new(Host => $ip_address, Timeout => $secs);