making linux software router

[pash]

I  am  a engineering student . I am making a software  router  on Linux platform using com(serial) port for communication. The sockets as I know are binded to tcp/ip thru lan cards. or can they read or write to serial ports too?.
Well I don’t know whether we can assign ip to serial ports too. And how to do that if it is possible.

Please guide me.
Help!!!
Please reply to
Parag Taneja(parag_t2k4@yahoo.com)
Shekhar Mittal(shekhar.mittal@gmail.com)