Depending on your hardware, tcpdd is up to 4 times faster than nc.
In client mode tcpdd sends any data coming from STDIN to the given (remote) server:port
In server mode tcpdd sends any data coming from the given port to STDOUT
client usage: ... | tcpdd [-v] [-b blocksize ] server:port
server usage: tcpdd [-v] [-b blocksize ] -p port | ...
options: -v : verbose mode
-b blocksize : blocksize in kB (default=64)
-p port : server port