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RUGGEDCOM ROX II

CLI User Guide

Chapter 10

Serial Server

Sink vs. Source Ports 339

Section10.4.1.1

Sink vs. Source Ports

A serial port can act as either a sink and/or source port:

• Sink Port

A sink port is a consumer of multicast packets. It registers itself to receive multicast traffic from a known

multicast group IPv4 address and destination UDP port and then forwards the traffic along the serial link. The

traffic is then received by a connected third-party serial device and processed.

• Source Port

A source port is a producer of multicast packets. It receives serial traffic from a connected third-party serial

device and packetizes it into multicast IPv4 packets. Each packet is assigned a specific multicast group IPv4

address, destination UDP port and source UDP port.

Section10.4.1.2

Multicast Streaming Examples

Serial multicast streaming can be deployed in multiple ways:

Serial Interfaces Configured as a Sink for Multicast Streams

In this configuration, the source of the multicast data comes from the Ethernet network interfaces and is

transmitted to multiple sink serial devices. The advantage of this scenario is the ease of configuration on the

Ethernet networking side. Instead of indicating which serial port to send to via unicast packets, the controller can

send a single multicast stream to all or some connected serial devices.

Serial Interfaces Configured as a Source for Multicast Streams

In this configuration, the source of the multicast data comes from the serial port and device side and is

transmitted to multiple Ethernet interfaces over one multicast stream. The advantage of this scenario is the ease

of configuration of listening devices. There will be a lesser need to keep track of IP addresses of interfaces, and

listeners can be easily substituted without concern over maintaining the same IP address.

Serial Interfaces Configured as a Source and Sink for Multicast Streams

In this configuration, the serial data is forwarded to other serial devices, with the ability to transmit to multiple

Ethernet interfaces via a single multicast stream. This is an extension of the two previous examples. The

advantage of this configuration is to allow one serial source device to send data to multiple receivers whether they

are another serial port or a listener device over an Ethernet network.

Section10.4.2

Configuring Serial Multicast Streaming

To configure serial multicast streaming, do the following:

1. Add the rawsocket protocol. For more information, refer to Section10.2.3, “Adding a Serial Port Protocol”.

2. Configure the Remote Host for the encapsulation of raw-socket serial over multicast with the destination

Multicast IP, UDP port, and interface(s). For more information, refer to Section10.5.2, “Adding a Remote

Host” and Section10.7.2, “Adding a Remote Host Interface”.

Siemens RUGGEDCOM ROX II User Manual

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