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Serial to UDP software for UDP communication

Olga Weis Olga Weis

If you want to know how to create UDP connections between programs or devices that use RS-232, RS-422, RS-485 interfaces for data exchange, read this quick tutorial and find out about a dedicated serial to UDP converter software that is designed for precisely this purpose.

Contents:

  1. Serial to UDP software
  2. What is UDP and how does it work?
  3. The differences between TCP and UDP
  4. Frequently Asked Questions

UDP Serial Port Redirector software


Serial to Ethernet Connector is a software solution that has the capability to redirect serial port data to UDP. This professional application creates virtual copies of real COM ports so that they become available for access from remote systems. Virtual interfaces behave exactly like hardware RS-232, RS-422, RS-485 ports, so remote computers and devices recognize them and communicate with them as though they were communicating with physical COM interfaces.

When to redirect COM to UDP


Most commonly serial to UDP converter software is used for sharing local serial ports, connecting to remote COM interfaces, and establishing UDP communications between networked computers and various specialized serial equipment.

Whenever the need arises to get remote access to a COM-enabled device, Serial to Ethernet Connector is the solution that comes to the rescue. The software supports UDP connections and offers a set of advanced features that make communication with remote peripherals even more efficient.
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With the dedicated software tool, you get the possibility to choose the transport protocol over which your local port data will be sent to a remote destination.

How to redirect serial port data to UDP

In order to establish a serial to UDP communication with a remote COM port device, just follow the steps below:

1
Download UDP redirector software and install it on all machines that need to communicate with your serial device. Also, install this program on the “server” - the computer to which the device is attached physically.
 Download UDP redirector software
2
Once you are done with the installation, launch the software on the server PC and select “New connection” > “UDP connection” in the main menu. After that, configure all required settings and click the “Create connection” button.
 choose ‘Server’ connection
3
Now, do the same on the client computer.
 create ‘Client’ connection
4
Here you go! After the serial over UDP connection is established, you can start the data exchange between your remote client computer and the shared serial device via UDP.

What is UDP and how does it work?


UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is a communications protocol, one of the core members of the TCP/IP protocol stack. UDP is often used instead of TCP for fast data transmission between TCP/IP hosts.

In the TCP/IP stack, the UDP protocol provides the basic mechanism for transporting data from one application to another. UDP uses specific ports allowing distinguishing programs running on the same computer.

In addition to the communications data, each UDP message contains the number of port-receiver and the number of port-sender. This makes it possible for the UDP programs on the receiving side to deliver the message to the right recipient, and for the recipient to send a response to the right sender.

The User Datagram Protocol runs on top of the Internet Protocol. When transferring messages from one machine to another, it does not check the data for errors. Also, it doesn’t provide any confirmation of data arrival, so you cannot control the speed at which information is transmitted between machines. As a result, UDP messages may be lost, duplicated, or arrive in the wrong order.

In general, it may be said that UDP provides an unreliable connectionless and loss-tolerating data transfer.

Here one might, rightfully, ask why so many users rely on the User Datagram Protocol in their network communications?

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UDP will be a good choice:


✅ If you have an app that needs to exchange data with several hosts as a time;

✅ If your application doesn’t rely on data being handled in a specific order in real time;

✅ If the speed of communication is desirable and error correction isn’t crucial;

✅ If you want to send a one-way notification about some activity and don’t expect any response, etc

The differences between TCP and UDP


So, now we’ll compare TCP and UDP protocol capabilities and see when using UDP can be more beneficial.

No connection setup. UDP is a connectionless protocol. This means it doesn’t have high overhead requirements which are characteristic of TCP. Since UDP does not use handshaking signals, delays caused by connection setup can also be avoided. These lower delays make UDP an appealing choice for delay-sensitive applications like audio and video.

Speed. UDP does not need to retransmit lost packets, it is frequently used for live broadcasts and online games.

Topological diversity. UDP can be multicasted to multiple hosts, in other words, with UDP you can establish one-to-one and one-to-many communications, while TCP only supports one-to-one connections.

Working in a multi-user environment. Сompared to UDP, TCP uses significantly more operating system resources, and, as a result, UDP is more commonly used in the environments where one server has to work with many clients at a time.

Lower bandwidth overhead. UDP consumes less network bandwidth, as its headers are only eight bytes long, while TCP messages have 20-byte headers.

Conclusion


UDP is considered to be the optimal transport protocol for applications aimed at fast data exchange. Serial to UDP Converter by Electronic Team lets you share COM-based devices over LAN and the Internet in the quickest and safest possible way. The solution will help you not only create an unlimited number of virtual COM ports but also give you the possibility to redirect serial port data to UDP and connect to it from any remote location.

Frequently Asked Questions

The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) delivers a faster stream of data by cutting out the error-checking process. It is an alternative to TCP protocol. The latter offers apps a way to send and receive an ordered and error-checked stream of data packets over the network. Both TCP and UDP are built on top of IP (Internet protocol) and can be called UDP/IP or TCP/IP in some cases. Both of the protocols send short packets of data, in both cases packets via TCP or UDP are sent to an IP address.
TCP is widely used and highly popular thanks to breaking large data streams into smaller packets, checking for the omitted packets, resending them and reassembling packets into the correct order. TCP is rather reliable — sent packets are tracked to ensure there is no data loss or corruption.

Contrary to TCP, UDP just keeps sending data packets without any error-checking. The sender is not trying to make sure the recipient got the packet — it is sending the next packets. And if the recipient missed some packets in the process - they are lost - sender won't reattempt. Devices can communicate more quickly this way.
UDP offers two services not present in the IP layer: port numbers for easier identification of different user requests and an optional checksum to verify the data was fully received.

UDP connection is used when faster speed is needed and having some errors is not that critical. The examples are live broadcasts, online games, voice and video communications.

Another scenario of using UDP is in programs that require lossless data transmission when the program is set up to manage retransmission of lost packets and arrange received packets properly.
With a special software solution you can make a serial port device accessible over UDP to many computers on the network ensuring fast and efficient transmission of data packets to remote machines and back. The application-device or application-application link can be established via UDP no matter how far away from each other they are. These scenarios are possible with Serial to Ethernet Connector software that offers flexible advanced settings for sending and receiving packets in orderly manner via User Datagram Protocol.
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