First timer looking to make a terminal server

[ArOne]

Greetings

I'm currently working on a project and my team decided that the olixuino maxi is probably the best for our needs.  We are looking to use it as a component that will accept serial and then translate it to DSL and then be accesed from SSH/telnet application. I don't have the board in front of me yet but I'm trying to find any reading material that can assist in this endeavor.  I've been looking at using socat or ser2net to use in linux.  Right now I think my most pressing question is if/how the general purpose IOs can be used or emulated as a physical COM port.

Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.