TCPTOOLS(1) Basic TCP utilities.

DESCRIPTION

These three programs provide a poor-man's netcat.

tcpclient - connect to a specified host/port and launch a child
	process. Forward information back and forth between the socket
	connection and pipes connected to the child.
	Terminate when the child terminates.
tcpserver - Listen on a specified port. For each connection that arrives
	fork off the specified program to deal with it (in the same way as
	tcpclient.)
tcpforward - Listen on a specified port. For each connection that arrives,
	create a connection to the destination host/port and ferry the data
	back and forth.

USAGE

tcpforward local-port remote-host remote-port
tcpclient remote-host remote-port [-q|-Q|-v] command [command options]
tcpserver [-q|-Q|-v] local-port command [command-options]

local-port: 		the port to listen on.
remote-port: 		the port to connect to on the remote machine.
remote-host: 		the hostname (or IP address in octet notation) of the
					machine with which to establish a connection.
command: 			the command to run
command-options:	what options to pass to the command.

VERBOSITY OPTIONS:
	-q: no output.
	-Q: errors only (default)
	-v: debugging output.

EXAMPLE

A simple echo server may be implemented in bash like so:

	#!/bin/bash
	# simple echo server in bash.
	IFD=7
	OFD=6
	while read
	do
		echo "$REPLY" >&$OFD
	done <&$IFD

To launch this server, do:
	# tcpserver 7 ./echo-server.sh
(remember that 7 is a privelidged port)

To listen on port 1337 and forward connections to port 80 on localhost do:

	$ tcpforward 1337 localhost 80

For an example of using tcpclient, see the bbots/bashbot projects.