One way communication over UDP using Netcat

I have a situation where many "smart" devices are sending me data via UDP. I can't change anything on the sending end. I'm testing nc (or netcat) but can't get past the following: Receiving end command: nc -l -u 8123 Test sending command: echo "test" | nc -u 127.0.0.1 8123 The first packet works fine, but then both ends seem to go to some sort of sleep and I have to CTRL+C to try again. Once it works I will have the receiving end "keep listening" (-k) and I will process the packets then