MultiSwitch, the First USB Sharing Hub 102
Iddo Genuth writes "A new extension to USB that will enable sharing of various USB peripherals between computers will be available early in 2007. The new MultiSwitch hub technology, developed by SMSC, allows the sharing of information and content from devices such as DVD players, cameras, printers, and scanners, and between laptops and desktops using a simple USB cable. Future hubs may also allow wireless sharing of peripherals."
This Was Possible A While Ago (Score:5, Interesting)
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But still, progress is nice I s'pose...
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Which has nothing to do with the comment you're replying to since it's just a cable with a built-in host controller.
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Which has nothing to do with the comment you're replying to since it's just a cable with a built-in host controller.
Not true; those laplink-style USB cables have a chip that bridges two devices. There's no host controller.
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Finally (Score:3, Funny)
How is this better than a mechanical USB switch (Score:2, Insightful)
What will they call this new innovation? (Score:2)
How about "FIREWIRE!"
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If you had bothered to read the fine article, you would realize that four machines can't use the USB device at the same time with this, either.
From the article:
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Even Firewire has builtin multi-host support and daisy-chaining. I can plug my iBook into the back of my FW hard drive, and get access to both the LAN/Internet and the drive plus any other FW devices on the bus. I only have to dismount the drive on the desktop system in order for the iBook to be able to see the partitions.
Gigabit ethernet is also very nice between multiple computers and network drives, esp. if you need long cables.
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Q: What happens when two people try to use the same device at the same time from two different computers?
A: Keep in mind that USB provides a connecting technology and not a network. Since the USB MultiSwitch Hub is a standard USB 2.0 device, only one person can use a connected device at a time. For example, I plug in my MultiSwitch Hub-enabled laptop, share your printer and/or get what I need from an external USB hard drive and then, when you want it back, we switch the devices back to you. If we w
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How is a 4-port router better than a manual ethernet switch?
Oh wait, stupid question
Re:How is this better than a mechanical USB switch (Score:5, Funny)
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Big deal (Score:2)
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Well, ok, not really hunting, just sort of idly speculating about, but still....
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7 port buddy switch [ultraproducts.com]
google is your friend. USB 1.1 only tho (USB Hi Speed)
Collaborative sharing? (Score:2, Informative)
FTFA Q: What happens when two people try to use the same device at the same time from two different computers? A: Keep in mind that USB provides a connecting technology and not a network. Since the USB MultiSwitch Hub is a standard USB 2.0 device, only one person can use a connected device at a time. For example, I plug in my MultiSwitch Hub-enabled laptop, share your printer and/or get what I need from an external USB hard drive and then, when you want it back, we switch the devices back to you. If we want to toggle back and forth, we can do that. But only one of us can access the desired USB device at a time.
So its really collaborative sharing of the devices (I didnt expect anything different, really). If PC#1 mounts a USB drive to a drive letter, then PC#2 will not be able to use it until PC#1 unmounts its... is that correct? The review reads like there is some PC/Mac software involved in the switching process, like you would have to do if you wanted to share an internal hard drive, or attached printer. No mention of Linux though...
Similar products that have been out for a while (Score:5, Informative)
(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with either company, but have used some of both company's techonology at work.)
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The future? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The future? (Score:5, Funny)
stupid stupid stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Hello blatant product advertisement!
This is NOT "extension to USB"! - this is a proprietary technology that has nothing to do with the USB standard.
USB devices were never meant to be shared this way. Just because someone made 'a switch' that manages to reproduce and route the data between two different host machines at the hardware level doesn't solve anything. You will still have a hopeless guagmire of compatibility issues due to conflicting host software and drivers. Its hopeless because USB devices and software were never meant to work this way. Just because they show it works occationally on one or two devices, doesn't mean it'l work on your devices and with your software for them.
Told you so! Haha!
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USB devices were never meant to be shared this way.
Maybe not, but I have found myself wondering of late how I have a number of peripherals that are useful to me on several computers, yet I'd rather not have to unplug them from one to put into the other. Notably, my USB webcam, my USB printer, and my USB memory stick reader.
I suppose an alternative to sharing devices is using a server, like a print server. Which essentially does the same thing as a switch, it lets one person "own" the device for a period of time.
KVM (Score:2)
I just use my USB-enabled KVM switch. I just have to be careful when switching whether any of the devices are currently in use.
This USB switch (if I can call it that) would be great if it has enough intelligence to accurately track wheth
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The phrase you're looking for is "USB KVMP"; keyboard-video-mouse-peripheral switch. The ones I've got from IOGear (see also Aten) have separate settings for KVM and P; so I can leave the printer (say) connected to the Mac while I do something on Linux or Windows.
This sounds like just the P part of one of those, with some magic goo to control it from the computer side, instead of hot-keying on an attached keyboard or whacking on a button.
And there's also USB-over-Ethernet sharing, which looked cute bu
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usb vs. firewire vs. ethernet.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Protocol? Why not USB over ethernet? Or use OpenSoundControl! _anything_ standardized... Think how much easier that would make it to write drivers. The point is that we can easily separate the protocol from the physical layer, or even from the transport layer. And yet we still have very specific protocols for USB and Firewire technology that are tied to the hardware they run on. It makes little sense to me.
It just seems silly to have all these communication standards that are basically just reinventing the IP protocol. IP has been "plug and play" for like a decade before USB was invented. At the time, of course, it was necessary to have something that could transfer data at certain rates that were unachievable otherwise, but now that most new computers have on-board gigabit ethernet, maybe it's time we took advantage of it. The nice thing about sticking to STANDARDS is that the next time they upgrade the ethernet hardware (10 Gb onboard, for example), device communication would automatically be upgraded with it. As a bonus, backwards compatibility would be easily assured.
Meanwhile, let's improve those damn ethernet connectors already. Goddamn tabs always breaking off...
I know the plastic tabs are a cost-effective solution, but I think we could do better, I honestly do.
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On other hand, a family would not have to buy more than one flash drive, keyboard or mouse,
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I first set one up at my girlfriend's place, an MFC 420CN [brother.ca]. Plugged it into the router, added the software to her ancient PII laptop, and she can scan, print fax - everything.
Same from my Powerbook, via WiFi, and the kid's PC upstairs.
Now admittedly the Brother software kind of sucks rocks, and the printer is dead slow, but otherwise this really is the sensible wa
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First thing I did was go out and buy the Add-On network card. Worked like a charm and the wife loves it. It may not print in color, but the print speed is amazing (~18-20ppm versus her old HP 4L which spat out maybe 2-4 ppm), and its networked so we only need one printer for both of us. Also worked nicely for my Linux server and OS X laptop.
Haven't bothered wit
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Brother and Samsung printers are the only two brands that appear NOT to be encoding secret numbers (dots) on their print-outs.
Communication protocols are seconds to ridiculous prices for incredibly crappy hardware...
It's a shame. HP used to make very good equipment.
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Multi-GHz desktop CPUs have a hard time keeping up with gigabit ethernet. Imagine what kind of CPU your digital camera and USB flash drive is going to need...
And once you have it connected, it still doesn't solve anything, because you have to decide on protocols over ethernet (unlike USB/Firewire/etc.)
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That's probably true, you have a point there. I assume USB and 1394 hardware do something more direct-to-RAM in order to circumvent CPU needs. Perhaps something similar could be done with NICs.
Don't worry about that, I won't. :)
I am absolutely software guy. But one thing I've learned from software is that it's usually b
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It's that it's an entirely different type of interface. USB is a peripheral interface, instead of a network interface. Never the twain shall meet.
Not in any way that would make it remotely resemble ethernet... You'd, at the very least, need to have a seperate NIC for your devices. At which point, you aren't gaining anything by using ethernet (USB cards are as
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I like the idea of merging USB and Ethernet; there are some obstacles to overcome. The most significant obstacle is that UBS provides DC power; Ethernet does not. (Granted, there are some power-over-ethernet standards.) Ethernet also doesn't have the same plug-n-play functionality that USB has.
Something to consider: It's very likely that home networking will work over the power lines. It would be possible to augment such a protocol so that it can have USB-like functionalities.
The first ? (Score:2)
yes, Airport Express (Score:1)
The future will be amazing! (Score:2)
Oh yeah? My future hubs may also allow wireless sharing of peripherals you don't even have.
Will
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It's called FireWire aka i.Link aka IEEE 1394 (Score:4, Interesting)
It's called FireWire [wikipedia.org] aka iLink aka IEEE 1394.
It's been out for years, it's a mature technology, it actually does support true sharing insofar as the devices can, and it doesn't require a host system. Add into that higher speeds with substantially less overhead (USB is dependent on your CPU) and it sure beats out the it's-USB-with-our-own-wonky-'extensions' stuff.
The downsides are a slightly higher hardware price due to a more sophisticated chipset and a bit of licensing fees (US$.25/device). And of course FW/1394 isn't as universal as USB, though whatever you're looking for is almost always available from somewhere.
FireWire doesn't quite get that right (Score:3, Informative)
FireWire almost has peripheral sharing right, but not quite.
Firewire has a built in allocation scheme for bandwidth, and a scheme to decide who runs the network (yes, there is a node in charge), but it doesn't have an allocation or locking system to decide which hosts are supposed to be talking to which devices. Some per-device hack may be developed to fix that, but if you create a FireWire net with two hosts and two slave devices, there's currently no system to keep both hosts from talking to the same
Firewire had such potential (Score:2)
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But is that point two five cents, or point two five dollars?
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There's another symbol for cents(a c with a vertical line through it), but
So I'm going to guess since the parent used $, they meant dollars.
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what, exactly, would you use this for? (Score:1)
But what devices would you want to share via USB that you can't
already share over an IP network?
Mouse - two computers, one mouse? madness. Same for keyboards.
storage devices? well, can't you already share drives/partitions via
NFS or that windows stuff? Printers? been done. several ways.
Network ports? It's called a router - most computers can do it.
I just don't see the application. Am I missing something?
Re:what, exactly, would you use this for? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually I use synergy [sourceforge.net] to do this all the time. (Between Windows & Linux no less.)
It's useful when you have a laptop and a desktop workstation, like I do in my lab at school.
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now.. perhaps a button on the mouse/keyboard allowing you to toggle devices ala kvm hotkey but that's what a kvm is for, yesno?
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I would like to be able to scan from our multi-function printer to any of the computers in my house. Keyspan makes a little USB-to-Ethernet device, but it requires proprietary software to run (No linux support that I know of). If this didn't require special software then I would be interested in it.
-dave
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In both cases, its real easy to scan a document over the network. I think the HP one lets you scan right from a webpage on the device. The brother may have required proprietary software, but I haven't done it enough to remember.
Either way, this tech is here now. Of course, you have to get a Multi-Function Copier to do it, but if all you care about it the scanner, then perhaps you can get a ch
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Have you looked into the network options for Sane [sane-project.org] on Linux? I have a HP PSC 2400 shared between 10 computers in my office. Scanning is shared via Sane and printing is shared via Cups [cups.org]. It works out really nice.
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-dave
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True. I've seen quite a few Linux-based router projects. I wonder how hard it would be to wire up an embedded controller with USB and Ethernet to run Sane/Cups?
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I have a KVM which does this. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's made by Zonet, or at least sold under that brand name. It's called the KVM3204 [zonetusa.com] and it seems it is already discontinued.
It's one of their PS/2-to-USB KVMs, which lets me use a PS/2 keyboard and mouse with my USB-capable PCs and Macs. My Windows XP box, Mandriva box, and Xandros box even let me use a USB keyboard through the KVM's USB hub. The Mac (PowerMac G4) will use the USB keyboard through the KVM if the machine's booted with the KVM pointed to it and sometimes for the first few switches back and forth. Ironically, though, I have to use a PS/2 keyboard with this switch to get it work work reliably with my Mac.
So, I guess, damn the standards and full steam ahead with the product, or something. It works really well with a PS/2 scroll mouse and my favorite PS/2 keyboard on all my systems.
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I'm now looking for a better one that can handle two displays across four or more machines where the physical displa
AWESOME!!!!1 (Score:1, Offtopic)
Share USB devices over ethernet (Score:2)
"Our USB Server makes it possible for USB printers (including multi-function printers), USB scanners and other types of USB devices to be used and shared by PCs on a network. It is ideal for home office, small office or classroom use.
"The USB Server supports both Ethernet and Wi-Fi networks -- making it easy to print to a USB printer or connect to other USB devices from a Wi-Fi based laptop."
It has been out for years.
Disclaimer: I designed the case.
So, why am I using this? (Score:1)
This article seems to lack one very important thing. Why am I using this device?
The examples seem nebulous not compelling. So now I can share my USB external drive, but you have to run a USB cable over to my computer? Or I could unplug my portable drive and walk over to your computer. Unless we want to start running 50ft USB cables alongside our Ethernet cables this seems pointless. Given that most people are migrating towards Wireless Ethernet, why not just connect a USB hub to the router for the same ef
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USB/IP: USB sharing for Linux (Score:2)
Too complicated (Score:1)
No PC, No Problem? (Score:2)
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Compatibility! (Score:1)
IMO Devices should just be lumped into categories with standard protocols, (with the option to use the device's custom features / drivers if you really want to) so: a printer is a "document input" device. A scanner would be an "
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Though it would be even better to find an SDIO USB host, because my preferred PDAs use SD/IO, but apparently they're not out yet. So maybe I should be whining about the "silos" of different physical interface slots ghettoizing functions, instead of functions like USB host available in generic chips that connect with tiny adapters to any of the CF/SD/MS/etc interfaces.
What's all the hub-bub? (Score:1)
This isn't the first (Score:1)
Wait (Score:1)