USB Network?

[Aidman]

So those any one know where to find USB 2 networkcables and hubs/switches?

[damonbrinkley]

I seriously doubt they have equipment to actually network all of your PCs through USB 2.0. The only thing I see around are USB 2.0 cables for hooking your gadgets to your PC. The only 'hubs' you're going to find are ones to expand each port to 2 or 4 ports...not to hook all your PCs into it. I found a USB 1.1 PC to PC link cable that ran at 8 mbps max but didn't see one for USB 2.

[frenchfry164]

All you really need is just a regular USB cable that has a type A connector on both ends and plug it up to both computers. Then make some software to do the networking. It'd be hard to find software for USB networking. If you do write some software, make sure you make it server-client and not client-client . That way you could hook up as many computers as you want.

[Aidman]

Do you know where I could find such software?
And how do you write programs for USB network, does it use winsock?

[frenchfry164]

>>does it use WinSock

I honestly don't know if you could work WinSock to do this. I was thinking more of sending raw signals through the USB. You'd have to search up on how USB signals are structured. It would be a major pain.

I don't know where you'd find pre-made software for this. It would be a good learning experience though. I know when I used "make xconfig" on my Linux kernel there was a section on USB Networking, but there were no options under it.

[SMurf]

I'd think it's unlikely that would work as USB is a device bus. The computers that are connected to it are not classed as devices, so they cannot be addressed.

When I needed to backup my hard drive to CD a few months ago I first used a parallel cable to transfer the files from my study PC to my home PC. After working out that it would take about 2 weeks non-stop for it to finish transferring I hunted for a USB option. I eventually got a USB-USB network cable off eBay. There's a small box at the centre of the cable that connects to the buses of two computers and transfers data between them quite quickly (Not on par with an 10-Base-T network). They're expensive for what they do and the drivers for it aren't great, but it did the job.

[Aidman]

How long time tid it take with USB? How much was the speed diffrens?

[SMurf]

The parallel cable was operating at its max. speed, about 14KB/second. The USB cable transferred at between 500K/sec - 1MB/sec and I was able to finish transferring after 3 days (4 hours each day, as the PC was needed for other things too).

[Aidman]

Ok thanks
hmm... How did you setup the network? Did you use a special USB tranfering program or did you just configure windows and use the regular Microsoft File Sharing Protocal?

[SMurf]

No special programs, just installed the drivers on each machine and used Windows to connect from one to the other, via TCP/IP (I had to find out the serving computer's IP address).

[JLBSchreck]

Tigerdirect.com used to have a usb to usb transfer device about a year or two ago. The divice was esentially the same as the one that SMurf described, and if I remember correctly, the price was between $20 and $30. I checked Tigerdirect.com before posting to see if they stilled carried the product but I could not find it.

-JLBShecky