Sharing COM ports to Windows hosts

[Victor Sudakov]

perryh at pluto.rain.com 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.

Correct.

> 
> 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,

There are several in the ports collection. Some even implement
RFC2217. Some work and some don't.

> initiated by a Windows terminal-server driver, and _transparently_
> connect the session to a serial port on the FreeBSD machine 

In fact, the question is whether there is a standards compliant (not
written for some proprietary hardware terminal server protocol) driver
for Windows. Not exactly a FreeBSD question, I know :)

-- 
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
sip:sudakov at sibptus.tomsk.ru