nc(ncat) is a simple networking tool for port testing. It can be used to chat across two ports.
Open a port 'nc -l -p 33334 '(do this in one session) On another sessin do this 'nc localhost 33334' where localhost = lab46.lair.lan and 33334 is the port to connect to.
This will allow you to see what is type in one session on the other session once you hit enter.
Documentation that I read said that if you leave off the port number it will us the default port 31337. I tried this with ncat and got that the port was busy. I tried this with nc and it worked fine.
I then tried to see if I could connect to my bot. So I tried 'nc lab46.lair.lan (botport)' where botport is the port that my bot is running on.
I was able to down load a web page by doing: ncat www.google.com 80 GET /HTTP/1.1
This what I did get to work.