WARNING: This information has not been updated since October, 1997!

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INDEX ENTRY FOR NETCAT:
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Name: netcat - Reads or writes data across a network

Version: 1.10

Author(s): Hobbit <hobbit@avian.org>

Ftp source: ftp.avian.org:/src/hacks/nc110.tgz
Web page: http://www.avian.org/web1/hak/netcat.html

Description:

    Netcat is a simple Unix utility which reads and writes data across
    network connections, using TCP or UDP protocol. It is designed to be
    a reliable "back-end" tool that can be used directly or easily driven
    by other programs and scripts. At the same time, it is a feature-rich
    network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost
    any kind of connection you would need and has several interesting
    built-in capabilities. Netcat, or "nc" as the actual program is
    named, should have been supplied long ago as another one of those
    cryptic but standard Unix tools. 
    
    In the simplest usage, "nc host port" creates a TCP connection to the
    given port on the given target host. Your standard input is then sent
    to the host, and anything that comes back across the connection is
    sent to your standard output. This continues indefinitely, until the
    network side of the connection shuts down. Note that this behavior is
    different from most other applications which shut everything down and
    exit after an end-of-file on the standard input. 
    
    Netcat can also function as a server, by listening for inbound
    connections on arbitrary ports and then doing the same reading and
    writing. With minor limitations, netcat doesn't really care if it
    runs in "client" or "server" mode -- it still shovels data back and
    forth until there isn't any more left. In either mode, shutdown can
    be forced after a configurable time of inactivity on the network side. 
    
    And it can do this via UDP too, so netcat is possibly the "udp
    telnet-like" application you always wanted for testing your UDP-mode
    servers. UDP, as the "U" implies, gives less reliable data
    transmission than TCP connections and some systems may have trouble
    sending large amounts of data that way, but it's still a useful
    capability to have. 

    Some of netcat's major features are:

    + Outbound or inbound connections, TCP or UDP, to or from any ports
    + Full DNS forward/reverse checking, with appropriate warnings
    + Ability to use any local source port
    + Ability to use any locally-configured network source address
    + Built-in port-scanning capabilities, with randomizer
    + Built-in loose source-routing capability
    + Can read command line arguments from standard input
    + Slow-send mode, one line every N seconds
    + Hex dump of transmitted and received data
    + Optional ability to let another program service established connections
    + Optional telnet-options responder

    -- Adapted from the 1.10 README file

Advertised architectures:

    Various releases of Ultrix, BSD, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, LINUX, IRIX,
    OSF/1, FreeBSD, BSDI, NetBSD, HP-UX, UnixWare, A/UX, NEXTSTEP.

Prerequisites: 

    C compiler