[Elecraft] USB to serial angst

[Don Wilhelm]

Ken,

Agreed from the applications perspective, but the TCP/IP stack has to be 
implemented at the device end too.  That is not just a simple 'add-on'.  
It requires not only the hardware interface layer, but the transport 
layer and the protocol layer as well as the application layer to be 
implemented (actually I have forgotten the exact technical names for the 
stack layers, it has been  20 years since I encountered them on a daily 
basis - I did work on networking products, but on the hardware side).  
However, my point is that that there must be some amount of intelligence 
put into the device to be able to assign/detect an IP address and have 
it respond accordingly to the Ethernet traffic that is flowing on the 
network.  Not an insurmountable task, but it is not in the K3 today.  
Perhaps in the future, or in a K4 that might come along someday (but not 
anytime soon).
RS-232 OTOH is point to point, and all data flowing to the device is for 
that device - it does not take a processing engine to detect an address 
and then pick off the data.

73,
Don W3FPR

Ken Nicely wrote:
> There are several free software applications that emulate an rs-232 port and
> send the rs-232 commands to a configured ethernet IP address and port.
> They  work very similar to LP Bridge, but they allow you to forward the
> communication to the ethernet port.  Once the software is installed it
> creates a virtual serial port and you just point your control software to
> the virtual port.  The software then send the commands from the virtual port
> to the ethernet ip address and port.
>
> Just add the ethernet to the rig.  No adapter required.  Just another layer
> of software.....until the control software developers implement ethernet.
>
> As a software developer, I can tell you that it is quite simple to add
> ethernet support to the control software.  There is a chicken or egg issue
> here.  The software developers are not going to add ethernet until the
> hardware designers add it.  Why would they, if nobody can use it.
>
> Ken  KE3C
>   
>