Many important devices used in today's industrial environment are still designed for use with an RS-232 interface. However, RS-232 is a point-to-point interface, and it imposes a distance limitation of only 15 meters between the device and the computer. To overcome these limitations, many users employ RS-232 to RS-422/485 converters, allowing RS-232 devices to connect to an industrial RS-422 or RS-485 network and transmit data over distances up to 1.2 km.