alternative to bb command

Hello!

I am wondering if using netcat instead of bb to send status updates to a xymon server is a bad idea? The bb program seems to just be sending text through to the server and netcat can duplicate that functionality.

So far, my testing has been good. The status updates work as expected however in trying to drop the test status using netcat from the xymon server did not seem to work and this has raised a small flag.

For example: echo "status machine,example,com.test clear TEST STATUS" | nc xymon.example.com 1984

Thanks,

Jason Kincl