For information on starting up another process and letting it run independently of your own, check out perlipc.

But you may want to try and get rid of the external program altogether and use Net::Ping. Then you have control over the entire process.

An example from the docs: 

    $p = Net::Ping->new();
    print "$host is alive.\n" if $p->ping($host);
    $p->close();

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In reply to Re: Executing independet commands in PERL by btrott
in thread Executing independent commands in PERL by FiReWaLL

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