I've recently been looking at possibilities for networked performance with pd. So far I've found that [netsend] and [netrecieve]  only seem to take numeric data (I.E. no symbols or bangs). 

This might be the result of the abstraction I'm using (made by one of my workshoppers) which sends messages with through a message box [send chan1 $1(, [send chan2 $1( etc. 

I've solved the bangs problem by sending a number repeatedly and having a [sel] at the receiving end. However I am interested in using netsend as a basic messaging system (to conduct a laptop group by typing from a central machine).