You will need to find out about how to disassociate from the telnet server on the other side. Maybe, if the telnet server gives you a cmd.exe command prompt, you can use the start command to launch a disassociated program. Alternatively, if the server gives you a unix-like shell, you might be able to send your program into the background by closing its input and output filehandles and double-forking. Proc::Background may or may not have a solution there.