COM port Redirector — redirect serial port

Jan 16, 2022

COM Port Redirector (Serial to Ethernet Connector) is a software tool that enables you to redirect up to 500 serial port devices over network (Internet or LAN). A single COM port can be accessed by multiple computers in the network, no matter where the port is actually located. With COM Port Redirector by Electronic Team there is no problem of working with remote serial devices - be it a modem or any other kind of equipment that uses serial ports for communicating with a PC. Remote and virtual serial ports and devices will be treated by your apps as if they were plugged directly into your machine.

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Contents:

Serial Port Redirector features
COM Port Redirector usage fields
Serial Port Redirector customer experience
COM port Redirector FAQ

Serial Port Redirector features

Redirect serial ports over TCP/IP network (Server)

Server listens for incoming connections from clients and redirects local COM ports – either real or virtual – over Ethernet. Any application that can initialize outgoing connection to TCP/IP server can be a client. A single COM port can be redirected to multiple clients at the same time, and each of them can transmit data to their local serial port, while Serial Port Redirector will gather all the data on the server.

Connect to serial ports remotely (Client)

Once a client connection is created, data transmitted by a local serial port is redirected to the remote server over TCP/IP protocol. You need to specify the IP address (or the network name) of a remote server and TCP port to connect to, it is not required to install COM Port Redirector on the remote server. Once your machine and a remote server are connected, your local serial port will receive all the data sent from the remote end.

Utilize UDP for data transfer

Serial port data can be redirected over UDP/IP transport protocol and broadcast over a local network. COM Port Redirector installation is not required at the remote end. You can choose either RAW data transmission algorithm or Telnet (RFC 2217) as a protocol for transmitting the data.

Serial Port Redirector for Linux OS

COM Port Redirector (Serial to Ethernet Connector) is a cross-platform solution, it now has a command-line version for Linux OS. You can designate a Linux machine as a server and Windows machine as a client, or the other way around. Serial Port Redirector for Linux supports data transmission over UDP.

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Support for USB and serial port connections

Working with TCP, UDP, RDP, and Citrix protocols

Integration as DLL and ActiveX or Core level usage

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Uses of COM port redirection technology

Here are some usage scenarios that demonstrate the benefits of using Electronic Team’s COM Port Redirector with Linux and Windows systems.

Sharing a serial port device from your computer can easily be done by installing COM Port Redirector. Once you have the solution set up, all client computers on your network can use the devices as if they were directly connected to the machines. Your PC becomes a server with multiple clients which can be very helpful for sending data back and forth to a serial device.
Another way to use this versatile software solution is to connect a serial application running on one machine to a device attached to a second computer. Both computers need to have COM Port Redirector installed for this to work. The application can use the virtual port created on the target PC to access and interact with the remote peripheral. With the Telnet protocol selected, an app can manage all the remote port settings as if it was physically attached to the device.
COM Port Redirector can also be used to establish communication between apps on two machines where employing a null-modem cable is not possible. The key is that both computers need to be connected to the same local network or the Internet. Then, port redirector technology can be used to create virtual COM ports on both machines and the applications can use them to communicate with each other. The functionality will be the same as if they had a physical null-modem cable connection.

If there is a device located remotely that supports the Telnet (RFC 2217) protocol, you can work with it as if it is a local device with COM Port Redirector. Install the software on your computer and connect to the remote device over the network to achieve full functionality over the peripheral equipment.
Finally, let’s look at a situation where you have a device connected to a local computer which is acting as the server. You also have an application that needs to communicate with the device but is not compatible with the server’s operating system. You also have a virtual environment on the second computer which can run the required operating system.

You can share the locally attached device with the virtual machine by installing COM Port Redirector on the VM and creating a virtual serial port. All you need to do now is to specify the server’s IP address and TCP port to establish connectivity. From that point on, all data sent from the locally attached serial device will be redirected to the virtual environment. Your application can then use the data for further processing or analysis.

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Serial Port Redirector customer experience

It is just what we need! COM Port Redirector is bounding our hardware together. Now, we don’t have to pay the extra cost for maintenance and upgrading of our virtual COM drivers. It is the perfect solution for us!

Xuehui Li, Product manager

I settled on Serial Port Redirector because it did everything I wanted it to do. It saves me a lot of time and headache.

Steven Bradshaw, Vice President of CVARS (Canada)

We choose COM Port Redirector product because of greater integration of virtualization of the serial ports, like physical devices.

Claudio Corniani, Electronic Engineering Manager (Italy)

FAQ about COM Port Redirector

1. What is a Virtual Serial Port Redirector?

A virtual COM port is a type of serial port redirector that can operate independently of specialized network software. You can create multiple virtual interfaces on a single computer allowing serial software applications to talk to each other directly without the need for named pipes or other methods of communication.

2. How does Virtual COM Port Redirector work?

The creation of a virtual port is not very complex and can be carried out by software tools similar to those that implement physical serial port drivers. The functionality that is added by an Ethernet COM port redirector is the ability to fully emulate physical interfaces to enable communication with peripheral devices that are locally attached to a computer.

3. Are there limitations when I redirect COM data?

With Serial to IP Port Redirector, you can simultaneously have up to 256 virtual COM ports active on a machine. In practice, the number of interfaces your system can support is influenced by its physical capabilities. Factors like the network bandwidth that is available or the amount of free memory on the machine may reduce the number of connections that can be active at one time.

4. How do I use the COM port redirector on Linux systems?

On computers running Linux, network serial port redirection is handled by an operating system daemon. The role of the daemon is to scan for attempted connections from other instances of Serial Port Redirector, transfer data between the network and serial interfaces, and to create outgoing connections when they are required.

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Serial to Ethernet Connector

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Requirements: Windows (32-bit and 64-bit): 2008 R2 SP1/7 SP1/8/10/11; Windows Server 2012/2016/2019/2022; Windows 10/11 on ARM.. 5.32MB of free space.
Version 9.0.1253. (12 Apr, 2023). Release notes
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