A single command makes two machines talk, and the channel they use is the TTY

Machine-to-machine communication TTY is the raw, direct connection between processes. It bypasses excess layers, talking over terminal interfaces that can be virtual or physical. When a device or software process opens a TTY, it gains a bidirectional stream—input and output—handled with simple system calls. This is secure, predictable, and fast.

In UNIX-like systems, /dev/tty represents the controlling terminal of the current process. Remote serial links use TTY devices like /dev/ttyS0, and networked systems can attach pseudo-terminals such as /dev/pts/1. In machine-to-machine communication, this channel can bind services across containers, VMs, or embedded boards using the same model. Low-level access means you can script and automate without protocol overhead.

TTY-based machine communication is favored when precision matters. It can integrate with automation, testing harnesses, or operational control loops. Processes can authenticate and sync data in seconds. Engineers use termios to configure baud rate, parity, and flow control, ensuring compatibility across hardware and virtual layers. When combined with encryption at the application layer, the link remains hardened without losing speed.

Consistency is the advantage. Every machine sees the same device path. It can be monitored with tools like screen, minicom, or raw Python scripts leveraging pyserial. Logs capture byte-for-byte output, aiding debugging and compliance. This simplicity scales from manufacturing lines to cloud compute pools.

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