[newbie] trying socket as a replacement for nc

[Jean Dubois]

I have an ethernet-rs232 adapter which allows me to connect to a measurement instrument by means of netcat on a linux system.
e.g. entering nc 10.128.59.63 7000
allows me to enter e.g.
*IDN?
after which I get an identification string of the measurement instrument back.
I thought I could accomplish the same using the python module "socket"
and tried out the sample program below which doesn't work however:
#!/usr/bin/env python

"""
A simple echo client
"""
import socket
host = '10.128.59.63'
port = 7000
size = 10
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect((host,port))
s.send('*IDN?')
data = s.recv(size)
s.close()
print 'Received:', data

Can anyone here tell me how to do it properly?
thanks in advance
jean