[Elecraft] Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

[Ken Nicely]

>
> Jessie,
>

You are probably correct about it not being that trivial from the hardware
end.  I am a website and desktop software guy, not a firmware guy, although
I have dabbled a bit in that. I know things are much harder to implement at
that level.

The real benefit would come from the ability of the K3 to respond
independently to each software application that was addressing it.  For
instance Ham Radio Deluxe could be connected on port 3000, Power SDR on port
3001 and the P3 on port 3002.  Each device connecting to the K3 would send
its commands and get responses back from the K3.  Most of the time the K3
would just respond to the caller who sent the command, but certain responses
(like the frequency) could be broadcast across all port.  The K3 would then
be aware of each device connecting to it.

One of the main problems with the serial communication is that only one
software application or device can connect at a time, so we end up with
programs like LPBridge (which is really a brilliant piece of software for
what it does) that make virtual connections to the com port and try to do
this task of marshalling the calls for the K3. Now that we have the P3, we
have the K3 talking to the P3 which is forwarding the communications through
to LPBridge which is creating multiple virtual com ports for HRD, N1MM,CW
Skimmer, PowerSDR, etc.  Its getting really crazy complicated.  A network
connection in the K3 and the P3 would make this all very clean......every
device talks to the device it needs to talk to.

Ken Nicely KE3C