On 6/7/07, Diego Zuccato <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello all. > > Talking on a forum, an idea appeared: a driver to "export" an USB device > on a LAN.
Sounds interesting! > A scenario could be a non-Linux-friendly printer that have to be placed > physically near the Linux server, but must be accessible from a > "distant" windoze machine. > > IIUC, the "server" part is the simpler: a daemon that acquires access to > the USB device and listens for network connections. IMO doable in > userspace w/o too many troubles. > > The hard part is the client. If it uses libusb or any other library, > that library could be modified to handle network access. But if it's > closed source (like many windoze drivers) then the only way I could > think is creating a "virtual hub" driver. This way no library should be > modified, allowing greater flexibility. Yes a virtual hub would be best. Unfortunately it's a real mission to write such a driver in Windows, not only do you need to be a USB expert but an NDIS expert as well. Maybe a virtual USB device that redirects requests back to user-space where a simple application can RPC them to the server would be easier to write. > Does some1 know of something similar already done or simpler methods? Well 5 minutes of googling produces the following hardware solutions: http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/usb_server.html http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb.jsp And the following pure software solutions: http://www.fabulatech.com/usb-over-network.html http://www.downloadjunction.com/product/software/128410/index.html An open-source project that does this would be very cool :-). > Yes, I know there could be many problems (latency, bandwidth & so on), > but atm they appear not too important. I guess it depends on the USB device and network speed, but obviously it has been done. Let me know what happens, I'd be interested in helping out. > Tks, > Diego. Damjan Jovanovic ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Linux-usb-users@lists.sourceforge.net To unsubscribe, use the last form field at: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-usb-users
