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MultiSwitch, the First USB Sharing Hub
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."
I remember a linux kernel module which would forward USB packets across the network to another machine which could access them like a virtual USB interface. It was kinda buggy and I don't think it ever made it into the main linux kernel, but it was a neat trick regardless, the guy who developed it told me he developed it after he was laid off and looking for work, but he got a job pretty quickly and stopped working on it.
Finally no more complicated CUPS setups for my printer!
that cost me $14 at the time and supports switching to 4 different hosts?
Even my cell phone has WLAN.. The only device left is the camera (which has a wlan extension if I wanna pay for it)...
I think they should've done this 5 years ago.
OK I read the article it just looks like a fancy USB switch it still only allows one device to access another at a time you can do that now with a simple mechanical switch and a powered hub.
No sir I dont like it.
There are both software and hardware solutions that do similar things already.
(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with either company, but have used some of both company's techonology at work.)
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Every time I see technology like this come out it makes me wonder how far we are a way from Maximum Overdrive or Runaway. With communication possible between your toaster, your Roomba, and your computer who knows what will happen if programming goes awry, or worse yet, a virus. Having your computer hooked to a network or the internet makes the concept even more interesting. How long before Fastjack taps into your home network and watches you and your wife on your security cameras? The possibilities of use and misuse are staggering. It's a brave new world out there, Timmy.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
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!
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I have an idea...
How about "FIREWIRE!"
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Sometimes I wonder, and this "multiswitch" idea just brings home the point, why we have USB and Firewire when it seems like it would be just as effective, and more standardized, for every device to just have built-in gigabit ethernet chips that can communicate using UDP or something.
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.
Surely I have seen such devices before ?
Future hubs may also allow wireless sharing of peripherals.
/. give me free advertising, too?
Oh yeah? My future hubs may also allow wireless sharing of peripherals you don't even have.
Will
It's called FireWire 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.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
OK, it's neat tech and I'm all for pushing the envelope.
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?
So now instead of unplugging my pen drive from my laptop and plugging it into my PC I carry my laptop to my PC and plug that in? Sounds ultra convenient.
The currently selected computer for keyboard, video, and mouse on my KVM gets to use the USB devices, too. Call it a KVMU switch if you like. I call it Natalie. :-\
It's made by Zonet, or at least sold under that brand name. It's called the KVM3204 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.
Now I can play Need For Speed Most Wanted, and Need For Speed Black Edition at the same time, on different computers using only one steering wheel! The future has arrived!!!!!
http://www.keyspan.com/products/usb/server/homepag e.spml
"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.
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 slave device.
FireWire, incidentally, is really a local area network down at the packet level. Calling it a "bus" is marketing-speak. There are packets with source and destination, acknowledges, retransmits, multicast modes, and roughly the same machinery as Ethernet. Yes, there's support for loads and stores into remote addresses in the protocol, but in practice, that means some host generates "store xxx into device register yyy", and out in the peripheral, some embedded CPU executes a switch statement and reaches the "turn camera on" code. The load/store mode lets you send only 32 bits per packet, so major data transfers aren't done that way. It would have been simpler if the thing just had a command/response protocol, like SCSI, and in fact, there's SCSI over FireWire.
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 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 whether a device is already in use vs. when it is idle and switchable so I don't have to worry about mounted volumes suddenly disappearing (esp. during writes) or scanners or printers disappearing in the middle of jobs. Even better if its logic could be incorporated into a KVM.
Of course, devices that are USB just for the power don't matter.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Isn't Airport Express a usb sharing hub?
mod me funny
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 effect?
Oh hey, we already have that Ethernet to USB feature. Want to share printers? We already have that feature, including the above-mentioned Network-connected printers. Want to share a thumb drive? It's a fricken thumb drive! Unplug it and throw across the room!
I know, we can share my USB headset/mic (except for the fact that they're plugged in to my computer!) Mouse? Keyboard? Tablet input? External Burner? Coffee warmer? Toothbrush? All of these things are local and pretty much unworthy of sharing
So, basically, the gear is useful if you have two nearby computers, a long USB cable, devices to share and no network connection. Sounds a little niche doesn't it?
This sounds like something the RIAA/MPAA will be fighting with all its might, unless it's "protected" with DRM.
If my USB external disk (or flash) can participate in this "sharing of information", it seems like another vector for ripping.
Will we be seeing DRM applied to this?
USB/IP is a Linux project to export USB devices on one computer so that others on the network may use them. As with the hardware described in this article, two computers may not simultaneously use the same device; USB has no provisions for that.
The whole idea of packet-routing and proprietary extensions to the USB protocol seems waay to complicated for the purpose of sharing periperals between PCs. Why not just a dumb electrical switch box? Sure, you have to turn the switch, but it's ten times simpler and ten times more robust. Not to mention cost-effective for the average consumer.
What about no PC USB networks? I want my PDA as GUI to use my camera and its storage, without a PC in the loop. But those "peripherals" are all USB slave devices, requiring a USB master, like the PC, to control the comms. Is this MultiSwitch the master, making a PC another slave? Or some other way to hook smart little USB devices directly on a truly universal bus, without a PC calling the shots?
--
make install -not war
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if its cheaper than ghost, i'd get it just to use a usb keyboard and mouse on a bunch of comps at once.
seriously, and slightly off topic. why is it that every damned printer or scanner or digital camera in the universe requires a different clunky, slow and buggy set of drivers to operate? exactly how many ways can there possibly be to get a document off the screen onto a bit of paper?
... they both use the exact same image transfer protocol and so you can get printing. now it'd be up to the camera vendor if they wanted to extend their onboard image output capability into "document output" by allowing formatting for direct printing. but the printer by default should be able to at least get the standard image stream and stick it on a sheet of paper, scaled automatically to the embedded DPI and landscaped, probably too.
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 "image output device" a digital camera could be three things: "video output", "image output" and "file I/O". a DAT machine would be both "audio input" and "audio output" all with simple digital stream standards that each can read and/or write. a cheap and dirty eBook, interestingly, could probably be just present itself as a "document input" device, and store several document streams internally, scrapping the "file I/O" ability.
THEN you plug your digital camera into your printer directly, one says "i accept images" and the other says "i output images"
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
See the Keyspan USB server. It's been around a while.
10 years ago, I was hoping today I'd have a fiber network in the house based on 1394b. That vision didn't pan out. It's a shame Apple has been so anti-Firewire in their lack of marketing support, especially and paradoxically since they bought Zayante.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Its called Networking.
In USB's case its sell the uneducated more stuff.
I thought these things already existed. Seriously, a friend of mine got one for xmas last year, 2005.
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