This board has a Beckhoff (c) ET1200 ASIC which handles the EtherCAT protocol.  This board translates EtherCAT to RS232 and RS485 with the help of the LPC1114 from NXP.  EtherCAT - Ethernet for Control Automation Technology - is an open high performance Ethernet-based fieldbus system. The development goal of EtherCAT was to apply Ethernet to automation applications which require short data update times (also called cycle times) with low communication jitter (for synchronization purposes) and low hardware costs.