Sharing COM ports to Windows hosts

[Victor Sudakov]

perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
> 
> > 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 :)
> 
> Finding a Windows driver that will work with an existing FreeBSD
> program is certainly one possible approach.  Another, which
> I understood to be the intent of the original inquiry, is finding
> a FreeBSD solution that will work with an existing Windows driver.

I am fine with that too. Whatever works.

> There's surely no reason why a FreeBSD system _can't_ support
> a protocol originally developed by a hardware terminal server
> manufacturer, as vpnc does for the Cisco VPN protocol.

Actually, that was the reason of my question here: perhaps someone has
already found a matching pair (freeware if possible).

Two commercial solutions have already been named: NetDialout from
PCMicro and DialOut/EZ COM Port Redirector from Tactical Software.

Eric has mentioned com0com, but I have not been able to make it work
(I am not much of a Windows guy, and this software is a good example
of Windows hacking, in the good sense of the word, but still, I cannot
figure out how to create the configuration described in the README
file, some components seem missing).

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