[Elecraft] Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

[Jessie Oberreuter]

      This sort of thing requires a non-trivial amount of software -- 
especially for an embedded device -- and comes with a great many 
complications.  TCP, UDP, SCTP?  Encrypted?  Login credentials?  Routing 
information?  Proxy support?  IPv4 vs v6?  Per-port feature set 
restrictions?  Connection timeouts?  The list goes on.
      Even with all this, IP over ethernet is infinitely better than USB 
b/c you don't need to be a kernel engineer on the computer end to keep it 
working.  Trust me, I really loved burning a weekend hacking the driver 
for a USB MIDI cable that failed to correctly implement the public, decade 
old protocol specification.

      The best way to start something like this would be to do it as a 
separate device (an application running on a PC first) that would provide 
networking services on top of the K3's serial protocol.  If you made it a 
small command-line application that runs under Linux, hams could even 
run it on an old laptop that sits on a shelf with the lid closed and the 
hard drive permanently spun down :).


On Sun, 29 Aug 2010, Ken Nicely wrote:

> Steve,
>
> I have tried several of these interfaces.  All that I have tried still only
> allow one connection to the K3.  Why is this?  Because the K3 has no concept
> of knowing what program it is talking to.  It just receives a command via
> the serial interface and replies to it via the serial interface.  If the K3
> supported networking, then it would know that it is talking to HRD on port
> 3000 and the P3 on port 3001 and PowerSDR on port 3002.  When request
> is received from any of these programs it would reply to only that program
> in some situations and to all the programs in others.  This is simply not
> possible so long as the K3 supports only a serial interface.