Serial device servers

Advantech has introduced the EKI-1521 and EKI-1522 serial device servers that allow RS232/422/485 serial devices to be remotely monitored, managed and controlled over ethernet and internet protocol networks.

Equipped with dual 10/100Base-TX ethernet ports and dual media access controllers (MACs), the devices ensure data transmission even if there is a network link failure. With redundant ethernet connections, communication is not interrupted by a network problem.

With one connection automatically assigned as primary and the other as backup, loss of the primary connection initiates an immediate and automatic switchover to the backup.

The servers have several conventional operating modes that allow connections to be initiated by either attached serial devices or remote ethernet hosts using both UDP/IP and TCP/IP protocols.

For applications beyond simple point-to-point connections, two new multi-access modes allow one-to-many and many-to-one communications.

The first allows up to five ethernet hosts to access a single serial device and the second allows a single serial device to simultaneously send data to as many as 15 ethernet-connected hosts.

Serial transmission speeds have been increased to 921 Kbps. Optimisations in serial to ethernet handling have yielded an ultra-fast round-trip latency of less than 20 ms where network traffic is not an issue, allowing the use of timing-sensitive serial protocols and increased polling rates.