Hello. My old sparc server have a USB extension card, which provides two
USB slots at the back of the machine, driving a USB printer on Slot A.
This printer runs at heavy load. because it cannot print the documents
as fast as we need, I wish to add another printer. In most casese, we
need the two printer working together the same time rather then one
after the other.
The two USB slots provided by the USB card are both OHCI (some USB 1.x
stuff, not USB 2.0). So far it seems one single printer uses up all the
USB bandwidth (sometimes printer stop there several seconds wait for
signal). What would happen if I put another Printer there?
case A: the new printer uses the bandwidth on slot B, both run as fast
as if they were the only USB printer;
case B: the new printer share bandwidth with the old one, the result is
both printer work 1/2 fast, that is equal to not having bought another
printer at all.
Which one is true?
Thanks in advance:)
--
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
According to http://www.sounddevices.com/tech/usbbasics.htm if the ports are on the same controller, they share bandwith. It probably depends on the hardware if it provides controller for each port or not. I think mostly it's two ports per controller, but dunno how to determine it... From lspci, and lsusb I would think that in my case (nforce4ultra) it's only one controller, but to share 10 ports ? Nonsense. In windows it shows 5 devices, which would correspond with the idea of 2 ports per controller... but dunno how to see that in linux.
You could probably plug some usb flash storage in and perform transfers to see if it slows down the printing, to be sure :)
Caster
