Woot woot. It's working as expected now. Everything is working as I want it to. Thanks for everyone's help. It creates a child process to SSH to the device, then kills the process when it's finished while the "Parent" keeps running. Here's what the final code looks like:

use IO::Socket;
use Net::Appliance::Session;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Sys::Hostname;
use POSIX qw(:sys_wait_h);

sub REAP {
    1 until (-1 == waitpid(-1, WNOHANG));
    $SIG{CHLD} = \&REAP;
}
$SIG{CHLD} = \&REAP;

my ($sock,$LOCALPORT,$MAXLEN,$USER,$PASSWORD,$FILENAME,%PORTHASH,$clie
+nt,$message,$con_handle);

$LOCALPORT=2500;
$MAXLEN=5151;
$USER="REMOVED";
$PASSWORD="REMOVED";

#open STDOUT, '>>data.txt' or die $!;

#Open Listener on TCP port identified by $LOCALPORT
$sock= IO::Socket::INET->new(LocalPort => $LOCALPORT,Proto => 'tcp', R
+euse => 1, Listen => SOMAXCONN) or die "Socket: $@";
$sock->autoflush(1);
print "Starting... running on port: $LOCALPORT\n";

while($client = $sock->accept())
{
    next if my $con_handle = fork;
    die "fork fail: $!" unless defined($con_handle);
        $client->recv($message,1024);
        print "In here:\n";        
        print $message."\n";
        $|=1;
        
        #If the packet has the right format of <Switch IP> : <Patch pa
+nel mapping>, SSH to it and implement the macro stored on the switch 
+       
        if ($message=~ /(.*)\:(\d*)/)
        {

            #Make sure the port mapping exists, If it does, connect SS
+H session
            my $host=$1;            
            my $portnumber=$2;
            #Pull in port mappings. Format is <Patch Panel> , <Switch 
+Port name> I.E. 13,FastEthernet1/0/20
            $FILENAME="ports.".$host.".txt";
            print "Opening Ports and Reading File:".$FILENAME."\n";
            open PORTS, $FILENAME or die $!;
            my @ports=<PORTS>;
            close PORTS;
            foreach(@ports)
            {
                chomp($_);
                my @t=split(/,/,$_);
                $PORTHASH{$t[0]}=$t[1];
            }
            print "Port reading complete\n";

            if (exists $PORTHASH{$portnumber})
            {
                print "Exists!\n";
                
                doSSH($host,$PORTHASH{$portnumber});
                print "Here AGAIN!5\n";
                exit(fork);
            }else
            {
                print"Port: ".$portnumber." is not defined. Host: ".$h
+ost.".\n";
                $client->send('Not Defined!!');
                last;
            }
            
        } else 
        {
            print "In ELSE \n";
        }
        
    
}
continue
{
    close $client;
    kill CHLD => -$$;
}


sub doSSH
{
    my $host=$_[0];
    my $interface=$_[1];
    my $s = Net::Appliance::Session->new($host);    
    eval
    {        
        $s->do_paging(0);
        $s->do_privileged_mode(0);        
        #Send all SSH output to STDOUT so i can watch it
        $s->input_log(*STDOUT);
        print "Connecting to $host\n";
        $s->connect(Name => $USER, Password =>$PASSWORD);    
        $s->begin_configure();
        $s->cmd("interface ".$interface." ");
        $s->cmd("macro apply 8021x");
        $s->end_configure();
        $s->close;
    };
    if ( UNIVERSAL::isa($@,'Net::Appliance::Session::Exception') )
    {
        print $@->message, "\n";  # fault description from Net::Applia
+nce::Session
        print $@->errmsg, "\n";   # message from Net::Telnet
        print $@->lastline, "\n"; # last line of output from your appl
+iance
        # perform any other cleanup as necessary
        $client->send('FAILED--');
    }else
    {
        print "SUCCESS! \n";
        $client->send('Successful');
    }

    
}
[download]