I used to use netcat for Windows to help track down network connectivity issues. However these days my anti-virus software (Symantec - but I understand others display similar behaviour) quarantines netcat.exe as malware.

Are there any alternative applications which provide at least the following functionality:

• can connect to an open TCP socket and send data to it which is typed on the console
• can open and listen on a TCP socket and print received data to the console

?

I don't need the 'advanced' features (which are possibly the reason for the quarantining) such as port scanning or remote execution.