[bmitc]

Most of my industrial career, I've used things like this for actual systems beyond prototyping:

https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/model.ni-9870.html

They go through an FPGA and then exposed via drivers over Ethernet or USB and are rock solid. You can access the serial data on the FPGA or you can use a default driver/personality for them that makes the module plug and play. There are other products I've used that expose RS-232 over Ethernet or fiber that work decently well.

There's also the Pmod interface:

https://digilent.com/reference/pmod/pmodrs232/start

I'll take a look at what you linked. I have often thought about doing something in this area, because it's amazing how reliable serial communication over RS-232, RS-422, and RS-485 can be, within their operation constraints.