On Sep 11, 2004, at 5:39 AM, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:

>> 1) A module that has an ethernet connection and
>> a USB host for controlling USB peripherals via
>> ethernet.
>
> I have such a thing on (or rather below) my desk, in fact I am using it
> right now :)
>
Does it allow generic USB-level access?  Is there a protocol for 
controlling
USB devices over a network?  (something lower level than printer 
sharing!)

I thought about this from a product perspective some time ago and sort 
of
decided that:

1) It was too open-ended a problem; each company with a x-over usb 
product
    would have to support a virtualized usb-over-ip as well.
2) there was a pretty big mis-match between the services offered by 
LANs vs
    the services offered by USB.  No isochronous data for ethernet, for 
instance.
    Even with voice/video QOS enhancements, you're looking at 10ms 
jitter and
    lots of latency; not the sort of thing that some USB peripherals 
would like.

BillW

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