The arduino yun [1] combines an linux-based SoC with a microcontroller on a single board. So you can have both, networking and applications in practically any language, and an internal interface to a microcontroller.
For only accessing a rs232 serial port over ethernet, there are easier solutions. But if you need multiple of such ports, sensor access, etc. its quite a nice combination.
Oh god, DCOM memories. I've spent days in a futile attempt to get that working. The best demo of how bad DCOM is would be the existence of OPC Tunneler:
DCOM is such a headache that these guys sell a $1000 program whose sole purpose is to make it easy to make remote DCOM connections. And I've recommended it as a screaming deal at that price. Given what it costs to get myself or a proper tech to a remote site for a day, I'd much rather use that and spend my time solving the actual problem than spend a day trying to get DCOM working before working on the actual problem.
Yes, the paper is not peer-reviewed yet. However, given the time it takes to go through a review process, it is not surprising that the authors publish a techreport on arXiv.
In any case, this is much better than what anybody anticipated.
For only accessing a rs232 serial port over ethernet, there are easier solutions. But if you need multiple of such ports, sensor access, etc. its quite a nice combination.
[1] http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardYun?from=Main.ArduinoY...