- creating quick and dirty proxies (nc > fifo > nc). (edit: you can also bridge udp->tcp this way, which makes proxying UDP through an ssh tunnel possible)
- making simple GET requests (printf "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: www\r\n\r\n" | nc host 80, or save the full request and pipe that to netcat)
- checking if a port is open (nc -p 8080 host, tends to be quicker than nmap and less to type)
- dumb file transfers ('nc -l port > file' on one machine, 'file | nc host2 port') on another (or using tar for directories). Usually I use ssh/scp, but sometimes that nc trick works just fine..
- creating quick and dirty proxies (nc > fifo > nc). (edit: you can also bridge udp->tcp this way, which makes proxying UDP through an ssh tunnel possible)
- making simple GET requests (printf "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: www\r\n\r\n" | nc host 80, or save the full request and pipe that to netcat)
- checking if a port is open (nc -p 8080 host, tends to be quicker than nmap and less to type)
- dumb file transfers ('nc -l port > file' on one machine, 'file | nc host2 port') on another (or using tar for directories). Usually I use ssh/scp, but sometimes that nc trick works just fine..