What is the correct way to read a serial port using .NET framework?

I used similar code to @MethodMan but I had to keep track of the data the serial port was sending and look for a terminating character to know when the serial port was done sending data.

private string buffer { get; set; }
private SerialPort _port { get; set; }

public Port() 
{
    _port = new SerialPort();
    _port.DataReceived += new SerialDataReceivedEventHandler(dataReceived);
    buffer = string.Empty;
}

private void dataReceived(object sender, SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e)
{    
    buffer += _port.ReadExisting();

    //test for termination character in buffer
    if (buffer.Contains("\r\n"))
    {
        //run code on data received from serial port
    }
}

Could you try something like this for example I think what you are wanting to utilize is the port.ReadExisting() Method

 using System;
 using System.IO.Ports;

 class SerialPortProgram 
 { 
  // Create the serial port with basic settings 
    private SerialPort port = new   SerialPort("COM1",
      9600, Parity.None, 8, StopBits.One); 
    [STAThread] 
    static void Main(string[] args) 
    { 
      // Instatiate this 
      SerialPortProgram(); 
    } 

    private static void SerialPortProgram() 
    { 
        Console.WriteLine("Incoming Data:");
         // Attach a method to be called when there
         // is data waiting in the port's buffer 
        port.DataReceived += new SerialDataReceivedEventHandler(port_DataReceived); 
        // Begin communications 
        port.Open(); 
        // Enter an application loop to keep this thread alive 
        Console.ReadLine();
     } 

    private void port_DataReceived(object sender, SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e) 
    { 
       // Show all the incoming data in the port's buffer
       Console.WriteLine(port.ReadExisting()); 
    } 
}

Or is you want to do it based on what you were trying to do , you can try this

public class MySerialReader : IDisposable
{
  private SerialPort serialPort;
  private Queue<byte> recievedData = new Queue<byte>();

  public MySerialReader()
  {
    serialPort = new SerialPort();
    serialPort.Open();
    serialPort.DataReceived += serialPort_DataReceived;
  }

  void serialPort_DataReceived(object s, SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e)
  {
    byte[] data = new byte[serialPort.BytesToRead];
    serialPort.Read(data, 0, data.Length);
    data.ToList().ForEach(b => recievedData.Enqueue(b));
    processData();
  }

  void processData()
  {
    // Determine if we have a "packet" in the queue
    if (recievedData.Count > 50)
    {
        var packet = Enumerable.Range(0, 50).Select(i => recievedData.Dequeue());
    }
  }

  public void Dispose()
  {
        if (serialPort != null)
        {
            serialPort.Dispose();
        }
  }

    using System;
    using System.IO.Ports;
    using System.Threading;

    namespace SerialReadTest
    {
        class SerialRead
        {
            static void Main(string[] args)
            {
        Console.WriteLine("Serial read init");
        SerialPort port = new SerialPort("COM6", 115200, Parity.None, 8, StopBits.One);
        port.Open();
        while(true){
          Console.WriteLine(port.ReadLine());
        }

    }
}
}