serial to ethernet encapsulation drivers

[warickwrx]

Hi

I am trying to understand the concept of serial to ethernet encapsulation. I can appreciate that the serial comms suite can be packaged within a TCP packet and sent across a network and will be unpacked at the remote TCP ip device back to serial. But I suppose my real question regards software based on older legacy serial communications and its ability to access the devices via direct IP instead of a Serial Device Server based communication. I would like the Serial Device Server to be set as a TCP Server and allow IP access to the device using the IP address. I would think that the software drivers for the legacy equipment would need to support this functionality but is there no intermediate software which can sit in the middle to get around this.

thanks

 

[VEBill]

I believe - but I'm not positive - that some of the serial over Ethernet products basically appear to the OS as a new serial port. So your legacy system likely needs to be running under an OS

 

[IRstuff]

While what you describe is, in principle, possible, it's unlikely that there's going to be an off-the-shelf product for what you want.

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

 

[VEBill]

Are you trying to do in software what could probably more easily be done with a hardware serial-over-ethernet device?

 

[IRstuff]

My reading is that the OP is asking to be able to directly address the IP portion of the serial over IP interface. Unless the OP has the full interface, that's unlikely to happen, although it's possible there's open source serial over IP available.

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

 

[warickwrx]

I am already performing the connection to the device via a serial server using tcp and psuedo serial comms ports. At this stage I am just investigating the possibility of another option using the method described . I will do some more exploring.

 

[robertjo24]

The folks at Tactical Software have a comm port redirector package called Serial/IP that allows legacy serial based applications to make TCP/IP connections. Basically you set up the redirector on a virtual comm port, and then connect the serial application to that comm port.

Here is the link, I hope it helps.

http://www.tacticalsoftware.com/products.htm