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  • From: James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] Network Clients and Servers: Redundancy
  • Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:21:45 -0600

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 09:29:16PM +0000, Lee Forrest wrote:
> We all have this nifty tcp tool called netcat (nc). About 19K
> for the standalone utility that needs only libc. It will make
> any kind of TCP/UDP connection and pass anything you want to the
> other end of the connection. And accept anything you want.
>
> Yet each and every client and server we have:
> http/ftp/smtp/pop/irc/dns/irc/nntp...has the same basic code
> built into it. Usually a much less efficient, and therefore
> larger, version. This is a wasteful redundancy and a potential
> security problem: Having just one discrete and tiny utility to
> do the job makes monitoring and filtering your connections much
> simpler. It certainly makes configuration and trouble-shooting
> simpler.

Ok. It's high time I got meself edumacated about this netcat thing. I
recently began
discovering how to use scp and had been thinking this is the best way to
transfer things to
and from my fileserver from out on the wider 'net. But maybe netcat would
work even better?
The first thing I need to know is whether it does or needs any form of
authentication. Does
it run by default without? I.e., you just specify matching ports on client
and host, make
sure your firewall won't interfere, then initiate the transfer by IP? If it
doesn't do
authentication, it could certainly be piped through ssh, correct? But then
what would be the
advantage over scp? I did look at the manpage, btw, but input from users who
deploy it in
the real world would help me disambiguate things.

Thanks, James




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