Although I have never used the Net::Cisco that your code is using, I've got a few thoughts that might help.

Since you're apparently hitting issues with the telnet connection that is causing your program to stop, I'd suggest calling your "telnetRouter" subroutine from within an eval block and testing afterwards if an error occurred. Others might be able to give more useful tips on error trapping, such as using the Carp module.

Another simpler route could be to see if the telnet module you're using provides a method for determining if a connection succeeded or not.

If you're wanting your program to continue on to the next item without waiting, you might want to check out fork or threads.

Just a few other thoughts and suggestions.

• It would be a good idea to get in the habit of having use strict; and use warnings; at the beginning of your Perl code.
• I'd suggest that you parse out the information that you need from the Excel file, store that information in variables and close Excel. Otherwise, if your program dies unexpectedly, you could be left with orphaned Excel processes that have your file open. --> Speaking from personal experience on this one. :D
• You're using global variables instead of passing values into and out of your subroutines. I believe that it would probably be better to not be using global variables. (That's something that I'm personally working with the new stuff that I write. It's been a struggle for me at times because I'm notorious for using global variables myself.)

Hopefully some of the above information/opinions will be helpful to you.