A NiagaraAX station running one or more serial-based drivers can provide “tunneling” access to its connected devices. This allows you to use a vendor’s Windows serial-based application (via the serial tunnel client) to perform device-specific operations. Examples include application downloads or other device configuration.

The tunneling client is separate from NiagaraAX Workbench—meaning that you can install it on various PCs, as needed. The key advantage is that serial tunneling requires only a standard IP connection (to the station), yet provides access as if the client PC was attached to the target serial network via a physical COM port, for example RS-232.

No special licensing is required to use tunneling features in NiagaraAX.

The following sections provide more details: