Serial Port Virtualization. Means of virtualizing Com ports.

September 16, 2008, 3:25 AM — Serial port virtualization has acquired a great demand on the software market. New virtual technologies have made a great step further to ease human life in solving the most pressing problems. FabulaTech is one of the major software development companies which provides solutions in USB и Serial device virtualization area serving the needs and demands of its customers worldwide. The company is the world’s pioneer at creating the innovation-based USB virtualization technology that really works. Being the global leader in the USB virtualization, network and wireless software solutions its primary focus is innovation.
FabulaTech measures itself by how well it serves and helps its customers to solve their most yearning problems. Its virtual USB and serial port products are the largest segment with the due responsibility for product delivery, technical architecture and support. In this article we will outline the most popular and demanded serial port virtualization softwares: Serial Port Splitter, Network Serial Port Kit, Serial Port Redirector, Serial Port Mapper, Serial Port Control, Virtual Com Port Control and Virtual Serial Port Kit to give the general idea of what such programs can do.
Serial Port Splitter (or sometimes Com Port Splitter) allows to get access to a device connected to a COM port from several applications simultaneously. This is a true virtual serial port driver and it runs as system service. It easily shares serial data of one Com port among several applications.
Network Serial Port Kit allows to access remote serial devices over local network or the Internet. This is a true emulation of the remote serial port. Network Serial Port Kit automatically detects if network connection with the remote side is broken. As soon as the connection can be established, the program reconnects to the remote side. Some communications applications expect minimal response time from a serial device. Network Serial Port Kit he Network Latency Compensation capability to avoid influence of network delays.
Serial Port Redirector makes serial data from virtual serial ports available on a TCP/IP network. All data written to virtual COM port appers on specified TCP-port of remote IP address. Virtual serial port looks and works exactly as a real hardware serial port. Compatible with a wide range of serial device servers, Serial Port Redirector offers highly configurable virtual COM ports. Serial device server developers confirmed, RFC2217 protocol is supported completely.
Serial Port Mapper maps any serial ports to virtual serial port. Serial communications program opens COM port alias but actually works with specified physical COM port. Additional console utility allows to control Serial Port Mapper via command-line interface.
Serial Port Control allows your application to control serial ports in the easiest way possible. The control comes in different forms such as ActiveX control, .Net component and Borland/Builder component. It allows to use native component in different developer environments. No need to check ports periodically if there is new data. Simply define a function for needed event and process the data. Just drop a control on a form in any development environment and compare this to writing thousands of lines of code.
Virtual Com Port Control is an ActiveX control which makes it possible to create virtual serial ports and control them fully. At the same time virtual ports look like as if they were real hardware serial ports for communications applications.
Virtual Serial Port Kit creates virtual COM ports and controls them fully. Virtual COM ports look like exactly as real hardware serial ports for communications applications. The control is ready to use in ANY ActiveX enabled developer environemnt linke Microsoft Visal Studio, Borland Builder, Borland Delphi. No need to check ports periodically if there is new data. Simply define a function for needed event and process the data.
So as you can see means of serial port virtualization can vary though the demand in this contributes to increase in need of innovations.