USB "insert driver" question

[Paul D.Smith]

I would like to "remotely access" a USB device. What I mean is have a USB
device in PC #1 and access it from PC #2 some distance away (even across the
world!). My initial thoughts are to have a device drive on PC#1 expose all
the USB ports via a network (wired or wireless) and have another driver on
PC#2 expose a "psuedo USB hub/hubs" which are actually the USB hub/hubs on
PC#1.

Now I'm a programmer with a little (very little!) experience of Windows
device drivers but from reading the Microsoft site, it's not clear to me
where the drivers on PC#2 would hook in in order to look, to all users, like
PC#2 has some additional USB ports.

Thanks for any pointers,
Paul DS

 

[Doron Holan [MS]]

what you are describing is very complicated to implement, if you are a
beginner i would suggest something a little less complicated.

d

 

[Paul D.Smith]

what you are describing is very complicated to implement, if you are a
beginner i would suggest something a little less complicated.

d

No kidding ;-). Seriously, I'm finding the MS docs. on their USB stack to
be somewhat less that clear. I've written a network protocol driver at the
kernel level, with associated user space interfaces (I work for a company
that writes network software). However that the MS docs were detailed and
clearly enumerated the various interfaces at various levesl in the network
stack.

For this USB stuff, I can't help feeling that I've missed a key document
somewhere because everything I've read seems to imply that the PCI
enumerator and the lower level USB drivers (e.g. usbehci.sys) cannot be
extended/replaced/patched to dynamically insert a new "hub".

FWIW, the system that got my thinking about this is a Freeview PVR that has
a USB interface. It connects directly to a PC which, of course, requires a
PC in the lounge. So I got thinking there are plenty of little Linux
adapters with USB ports and wireless networking so what if I could "extend"
the USB cable over a wirelsss network?

Anyway, this is something for me to work on in moments of boredom (keeps the
old mind active!) so if you do have any pointers which would be useful, I'd
appreciate them. As an example, I've been reading the following MS page,
and the links form it.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/bus/usb/default.mspx Lots of
interesting stuff but seems to be little of help to a developer. For
example, I would have expected USB hardware to require at least a thin
device driver at the bottom of the stack - but the examples they give don't
imply any - surely all PC USB cards aren't comletely identical?

Paul DS.

 

[SergeV]

If I were you I'd probably created COM object for the device,
exported necessary interface(s)
and used DCOM.
huh?

 

[Doron Holan [MS]]

there is no way to create a virtual hub onthe bus. you could write your own
root enumerated virtual hub, but half the interaction between the hub and
the HC is completely undocumented. not sure what you mean by a thin driver.
usbport is the main driver for the HC and there is a miniport (usbehci,
usbohci, etc) that provides controller specific functionality. this
interface is also undocumented

d

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