Well, the equinox box is really that you telnet to the box and get a specific port. Rather like a print server.

The Sparta Software is more like what you're describing. You have a server with like 6 ports in it. The clients have on e "virtual" com port that is in reality an ethernet device. Whenever the server gets a request, it pools to the next available com port and modem that's free. No real serials are used on the clients at all. I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't a shareware/freeware version of something similar. It seems it wouldn't be that hard to write. 'Course, I'm a non-coder, so it all seems like it would be easy to me, all safe in the fact that I'll never attempt it.