netcat+mkfifo does the actual transfer with TCP - so there's no tunneling involved. This solution tunnels tcp through file abstraction, so it works significantly differently.

As for the uses, see the three author listed. For example, by using a file share as transport you may evade firewall.

  mkfifo /mnt/shared/connection
  nc localhost 12345 > /mnt/shared/connection < /mnt/shared/connection

Seems the same?

Hi Bawolff! Yes that's a great combo. I guess File Tunnel provides a couple of things that makes the tunnel maintenance a bit easier.

1. It gracefully supports each side of the tunnel turning on and off.

2. It accepts any number of clients, and forwards them through the tunnel.

3. It recycles the shared file.

That only works on Linux, but it looks like this program works on Windows too.