OT: Ethernet extender

You want a pair of RS232Ethernet bridges such as this (first Google hit). This is, of course, provided that you have the sole use of the RS485 link. If not you will have to write the equivalent. You will probably want to filter multicast and broadcast traffic going over the link.

Andrew

I meant, of course, RS485Ethernet bridge! (Sigh: end of day)

Andrew

Fantastic Andrew, thanks for that - the thing that was confounding me was "bridge" - stupidly didn't think of that term, once I got "extender" in my mind nothing else came. Searching for Ethernet serial bridge finds lots of similar things.

Regards, Robert

If you have exclusive use of the RS485 wire then why not remove the RS485 transceivers in favor of the more common and faster "ethernet extenders"?

Recently had need to temporarily link two locations 5,000' apart with ethernet interfaces on each end. IIRC a pair of COTS boxes were $400 and served nicely. Basically they were private line DSL modems talking to each other over a single twisted pair.

Unfortunately we only have exclusive use of the line in the sense that "nothing else is using it", not that we can rip out the existing hardware. Actually, there are two possibilities, one with serial tranceivers and one with bare wire, depending on various other things. Obviously we'd prefer bare wire, but ours isn't to reason why ... :-)

Yep, that would be the preferred case.

Robert