A network serial port is a virtual serial port that uses a network socket on the host computer. A network socket is the endpoint of a network connection and is represented by an IP address and a port number. The vSphere API uses Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) to identify the protocol, IP address, and port number for endpoints of network serial port connections. See RFC3986 for information about Uniform Resource Identifiers.

To use a network serial port, you must verify that the ESX host supports the feature and then create or reconfigure a virtual machine to configure the port. For information about writing an application that uses the vSphere API, see the

vSphere Web Services SDK Programming Guide

. As an alternative, you can use the vSphere Client to configure a network serial port. For more information, see the online help for the VMware vSphere Client.