Sharing COM ports to Windows hosts

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Peter Boosten <peter at boosten.org> wrote:
> On 3-9-2012 5:02, Victor Sudakov wrote:
> > There is a FreeBSD box with several RS232 ports. Can those ports
> > be accessed by Windows hosts over the network?
>
> If I understand your question correctly, then AFAICT the only way to 
> access serial ports over the network is with a piece of additional 
> hardware, like a terminal server, for instance:
>
> http://www.perle.com/products/Terminal-Server.shtml?utm_source=ppc&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=server

I believe the OP wants to use a FreeBSD machine, that has several
serial ports and a network connection, _as_ a terminal server.

I can think of no reason why such an arrangement could not be made
to work; the question is whether someone has already written the
necessary FreeBSD code to accept a telnet/ssh/whatever connection,
initiated by a Windows terminal-server driver, and _transparently_
connect the session to a serial port on the FreeBSD machine via
tip(1) or some such.  (If all that's needed is access from a Windows
Command window, it is a simple matter of ssh-ing to the FreeBSD box
and then running tip(1).)