Creating “server” connection

Serial to Ethernet Connector lets you establish full-fledged client-server connection between two and more local real and virtual serial ports and devices, which are connected to serial ports. So, you can get access to any serial port and any serial device over network even if this device is connected to PC, which is located far from your home. To create a connection, follow these instructions:

1. Switch to “Create connection” tab.
2. Specify connection name to identify this configuration. By default, SEC will input the closest possible name based on your settings, for instance, COM5 [Server].

3. Select connection type you want to create. In this case it is “Share serial port for incoming connections (Server)”.
 

4. In “Select Serial Port” field choose local serial port which you want to share: either add it manually, or select one from the drop-down list.
 

Tick “Create as virtual serial port” option if you would like to use virtual serial ports instead of real ones. Virtual serial ports are exact copies of real ones and support all their features such as parity control, databits, stop bits, baud rate, flow control, signal lines, etc. The advantage of virtual serial ports technology is that you are not limited to the number of physical serial ports in a system, thus you can free existing serial ports for other applications. 

For instance, you can connect serial device to COM1 port at the server side and read all its data from your application connected to COM255 at the client’s side. 

Please, note that serial port name must not contain spaces inside.

In case you are feeding incoming data to the application directly, you can safely tick “Create as virtual serial port” checkbox, provided that application accepts non-standard COM port names (some programs may have COM1/COM2/COM3/COM4 option only). 

Serial to Ethernet Connector supports serial COM ports overlapping. It means that virtual serial port can have the same name as existing physical COM port. If overlapped virtual COM port is created, it will be accessed instead of physical one. 

5. Tick “Strict baudrate emulation” checkbox if you want to enable baudrate emulation.

Baudrate emulation permits virtual ports to work with the same speed as real ones. It might be useful when a virtual port is connected to a real port. Baudrate emulation equalizes their speed, thus allowing to avoid data losses.

6. Specify local TCP port number which the server will listen to. Make sure this port is not blocked by firewall (if any) and is not used by other servers in your system (DNS, SMTP, IIS, etc.) If you are not sure, please, don’t modify this value.

7. Finally, click “Create connection” button in Main window. Once connection is successfully created, you can see your connection in Connections tree.

8. Open local serial port. You may use Windows HyperTerminal utility for this purpose. This step is necessary only if you want to verify the successful creation of connection. 

6. Create “client” connection at the remote end and make sure that remote host name and port number match the ones you set in server’s configuration.

9. Now you are ready to start communication process with default settings. You can also refer to Editing “server” connection section if you want to edit your connection settings. 

Alternatively, you can use Mirror connection option, to automatically configure the remote end. 

You can consult Setting up connection settings, Signal lines, Proxy and security settings sections to find out more information on configuring all available settings after activating Advanced mode.