Serial to Ethernet Connector – Complete Guide

These days laptops and desktops equipped with serial ports are rare, although serial devices are still widely used. What do you do if you need to connect to a serial device then? Use Serial to Ethernet Connector. This application allows you to access serial devices over network, no matter where it is actually located you can use its functionality and contents as if it were available to you locally. Thus you can work with up to 500 serial port devices even if your computer has no serial ports. It works the other way around too – you can a serial device inserted in your machine with others.

Server – share serial port for incoming connections

When you share a local serial port – real or virtual – your computer performs the function of a server. It listens to incoming client connections, there may be any number of them, each transmitting input/ output serial data to their local serial port, while Serial to Ethernet Connector automatically joins these data streams on server.

Client – connect serial port to remote host

Clients initiate connection to the remote TCP/IP server to redirect local serial port data – you will need to specify the IP address or network name of a remote server and TCP port to connect to.  For client connection it is not necessary to have Serial to Ethernet connector on the remote side. The client connection enables receiving data sent from the remote side on the local port.

Redirect data over UDP

For sharing serial ports you can use UDP/ IP transport protocol, no SEC is required on the remote side. This protocol allows broadcasting all serial data over network.

The application allows you to select data transmission protocol – RAW data transmission or Telnet (RFC 2217) protocol.

Work across platforms

Serial to Ethernet Connector is compatible with Windows and Linux OS. Your server can run Windows, while clients – Linux OS X and vise versa, this works for UDP protocol too. Linux version is available for ARM-based devices, so you can share their serial ports or connect to remote devices.