closed - vbnet app to receive data from an IP address?

I have a data aquisition device with a network interface. This works fine, but the functionality of the web interface is quite poor.

What I would like to do is get the output from the device from the IP address and input it into a variable into my vb.net app.

Using a program the company made called Httpget from a command line, they send a command like this: httpget -r -S "*01X01\r" 128.100.101.254:1000

From the command options, I can tell that all they are doing is sending the string *01X01\r to the IP address of 128.100.101.254 on port 1000.

Further, the -r -S switches refer to Raw Mode (no Http headers) and POST string to URL. The output response in a command prompt is 01X01074.3 (the 074.3 is the useable numeric data I need to use for calculations).

Again, all I need to do is send the command to the IP address and take the value returned and place it into a variable (but dont want to use the httpget program to do this). I expect the command would be sent about 1 time per second. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.