Support FAQ

Serial Port Redirection

Opengear’s Port Share software delivers the virtual serial port technology your Windows and Linux applications need to open remote serial ports and communicate with serial devices that are connected to your console server.

PortShare for Windows

The PortShare for Windows software establishes client-server connections between the serial ports on remote console servers and applications on your Windows PC or server servicing COM ports.

Once connection is established, all data sent to the nominated COM port on the Windows computer will be immediately redirected and delivered out the corresponding serial port on the console server. Similarly incoming data on the console server serial port is redirected to the virtual COM port on the Windows computer where it can be processed further.

This software is supplied free with each console server and you are licensed to install PortShare on one or more computers for accessing any serial device connected to a console server port.

The portshare_setup.exe program is included on the CD supplied with your console server. A copy can be freely downloaded from the ftp site. For more detailed information refer faq 350 or refer to the PortShare User Manual.

PortShare for Linux

The PortShare driver for Linux maps the console server serial port to a host tty port. Opengear has released the PortShare opengear-serial-client as an open source utility for Linux, AIX, HPUX, SCO, Solaris and UnixWare. This utility can be freely downloaded from the ftp site.

This PortShare serial port redirector allows you to use a serial device connected to the remote console server as if it were connected to your local serial port. The opengear-serial-client creates a pseudo tty port, connects the serial application to the pseudo tty port, receives data from the pseudo tty port, transmits it to the console server through network and receives data from the console server through network and transmits it to the pseudo-tty port.

The .tar file can be freely downloaded from the ftp site. For more details refer faq 351 or refer to the PortShare User Manual.

Third party port redirection software

All Opengear console servers support RFC2217 on any port - which provides for virtual serial port connections. To enable simply tick RFC2217 as the Console Server Setting for the specific serial port in the Serial&Network:Serial Ports menu.

You will then need to run some client software in the desktop computer to actually redirect its local serial port communications to the remote serial ports.

One such client that Opengear has tested is the Serial/IPT COM Port Redirector from Tactical Software. Like PortShare this software creates virtual COM ports on the Windows PC that local applications can access, with no change to the application software. Tactical Software provides a trial copy of its products.