Fast way to copy a large file on a LAN

I am having some trouble with NFS, and I'd like to try using just plain old TCP. I have no idea where to begin, though. Hardware-wise, I am using an ethernet crossover cable to network two netbooks. To network them, I type $ sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.1 up && ping -c 10 -s 10 192.168.1.2 && sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start on the first netbook and $ sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2 up $ ping -c 10 -s 10 192.168.1.1 $ mount /mnt/network1 on the second where /mnt/network1 is specified in /etc/fstab as 192.168.1.1:/home /mnt/network1 nfs noauto,user,exec,soft,nfsvers=2 0 0 as well as in /etc/exports (using the syntax of that file), on the first netbook. The above works fine, but the files and directories are huge. The files average about half a gigabyte a piece, and the directories are all between 15 and 50 gigabytes. I'm using rsync to transfer them, and the command (on 192.168.1.2) is $ rsync -avxS /mnt/network1 ~/somedir I'm not sure if there's a way to tweak my NFS settings to handle huge files better, but I'd like to see if running an rsync daemon over plain old TCP works better than rsync over NFS. So, to reiterate, how do I set up a similar network with TCP? **UPDATE:** So, after a good at few hours of attempting to pull myself out of the morass of my own ignorance (or, as I like to think of it, to pull myself up by my own bootstraps) I came up with some useful facts. But first of all, what led me on this rabbit trail instead of simply accepting the current best answer was this: nc is an unbelievably cool program that resolutely fails to work for me. I've tried the netcat-openbsd and netcat-traditional packages with no luck whatsoever. The error I get on the receiving machine (192.168.1.2) is: me@netbook:~$ nc -q 1 -l -p 32934 | tar xv Can't grab 0.0.0.0:32934 with bind tar: This does not look like a tar archive tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors route gives: me@netbook:~$ route Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface default dir-615 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0 link-local * 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 eth0 192.168.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 2 0 0 wlan0 192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 But, here's the good news: having the static IP addresses set in /etc/network/interfaces, which I started doing while trying to get nc working, fixed all my NFS problems and rekindled my love for NFS. The exact configuration I used (with 192.168.1.1 for the first netbook, of course) was: auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 With those settings, the two netbooks will be able to ping each other directly after being booted up, without even an ifup. Anyway, I'd still really like to see nc in action, so I'm hoping someone help me debug this process.