Software Alternatives & Reviews

netcat VS PFConfig

Compare netcat VS PFConfig and see what are their differences

netcat logo netcat

Netcat is a featured networking utility which reads and writes data across network connections...

PFConfig logo PFConfig

PortForward's PFConfig Software lets you forward ports on any router for any program.
  • netcat Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-11-19
  • PFConfig Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-06

netcat videos

Linux Terminal 101: Netcat

More videos:

  • Review - Advanced Netcat and TCP Fun - Hak5 1922
  • Review - Netcat 101: Remote Shells in Windows, HakTip 86

PFConfig videos

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to netcat and PFConfig)
Monitoring Tools
74 74%
26% 26
Log Management
84 84%
16% 16
Productivity
61 61%
39% 39
Security
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare netcat and PFConfig

netcat Reviews

9 Best Angry IP Scanner Alternatives Reviewed 2021 (Free & Paid)
Netcat lacks a lot of the documentation you can easily find with software like AngryIP or Nmap which in my opinion is its biggest drawback. If you’re thinking about trying out Netcat, check out our Netcat Cheat Sheet to quickly pull up powerful and useful commands. Netcat is compatible with Windows, Linux, and macOS systems.
Top 5 Best Port Scanners
Netcat is one of the oldest network tools in the "Unixverse", it's been there since 1995, and the last official version is from 2004. Although it has many forks and variants that work pretty well on modern operating systems, like ncat from the Nmap suite, or this alternative Netcat version from Mike Frysinger.

PFConfig Reviews

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, netcat should be more popular than PFConfig. It has been mentiond 7 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

netcat mentions (7)

  • could not connect to the rhel-9 from putty in windows machine
    If you don't like using telnet, that's fine. Don't use it. There are plenty of other options available. Use netcat. Or use netcat. Or use netcat. Or read and write directly to /dev/tcp/hostname/port using shell constructs. Or run openssl s_client if you suspect something complicated is listening on the other end. There is more than one way to do it and ways that are not your way still work. Source: 11 months ago
  • The HTTP crash course nobody asked for
    Reminder, there are many different netcats, here are some of the most commons: - netcat-traditional http://www.stearns.org/nc/ - netcat-openbsd : https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/nc/netcat.c (also packaged in Debian) - ncat https://nmap.org/ncat/ - netcat GNU: https://netcat.sourceforge.net/ (quite rare) To prevent any confusion, I like to recommend socat: http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Gaining remote access to a computer with a reverse shell attack in Node.js
    A common tool to execute a reverse shell is called netcat. If you're using macOS, it should be installed by default. You can check by running nc -help in a terminal window. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Programm to send and receive TCP/UDP Packets
    You could try using Ncat on Windows or netcat on Linux, though it's a command-line only tool if that matters. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Is there a way to copy a file from a remote shell to local without using scp?
    If you have netcat, you can easily set up a transfer from one machine to the other:. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

PFConfig mentions (4)

  • Port was opened now it says unreachable.
    But the network tends to be slow with updating data. I've downloaded this tool https://portforward.com/store/pfconfig.cgi You can check to see if ports are open. Maybe it already works but the explorer shows you old data. This could give you some peace of mind. Source: over 2 years ago
  • i need help with port forwarding
    If your running it from a server, connect to it if your using windows server 2015 - 2019 essentials which is easy or if you’re running it from your computer, it’s same thing..Download portfoward’s software and install it. Source: over 2 years ago
  • friends cant connect to my server (1.17.1)
    Make sure your router is set to ipv4 and not ipv6, and you can install https://portforward.com/store/pfconfig.cgi To open your ports and make your ip static, that is how I fixed my server. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Port Forwarding to HyperV VM
    You can go to https://portforward.com/store/pfconfig.cgi (or any testing) which can test the ports on your public IP to see if they are open. Source: about 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing netcat and PFConfig, you can also consider the following products

Wireshark - Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.

Robusta Port Forwarder - This tool is created with the primary intention of making it easy to the end user to set forwarding rules in his router....

tcpdump - tcpdump is a common packet analyzer that runs under the command line.

AUTAPF - Reliable TCP and UDP port forwarding for Windows.

socat - socat is a relay for bidirectional data transfer between two independent data channels.

Simple Port Forwarding - Simple Port Forwarding works with WebPages and not directly with your router.