usbredir: A protocol for sending USB device traffic over a network connection

https://www.spice-space.org/usbredir.html

by sipofwater • 2 years ago

234 110 2 years ago

naikrovek5• 2 years ago

Does this offer anything over USB/IP?

k8svet2• 2 years ago

I think just that it's plugged in at the SPICE level. So I guess you could redirect a USB device into a guest that isn't running Linux and can't run usb/ip? But also, this is how usb redirection works with virt-viewer/virt-manager, I'm fairly sure.

naikrovek5• 2 years ago

USB/IP works fine on Windows and MacOS, though MacOS has no ability to use devices shared by USB/IP; it can only share devices to others.

What is this “SPICE level” you mentioned?

touisteur2• 2 years ago

Now I'm wondering whether someone has built support for this in rust-vmm...

WhatIsDukkha4• 2 years ago

The one hack I keep hoping <someoneelse> will do the actual work for is -

redirecting my steamdeck control via usb to my linux gaming rig and expose it as a usb device(s) for steaminput.

It seems like a natural and perhaps even "straightforward" hack but I've seen no evidence of one so far, perhaps there is something in usb that limits the ability to proxy it correctly.

KeplerBoy• 2 years ago

Sounds like something Valve should make. Kinda weird they haven't so far.

ShamelessC• 2 years ago

Valve's "remote play" allows one to play games on another host computer via your Steam Deck as though you are plugged straight. If you don't need the video streaming, you can lower the settings.

edit; oh nm, user wants a direct wired connection to work.

jxy• 2 years ago

it may not be practical given the possible high latency.

crtasm• 2 years ago

over USB. what might introduce high latency?

all23• 2 years ago

Maybe allow mounting of the the steamdeck input devices in steamdeck:/dev over network on your linux box so it is exposed as an additional device? Something like plan9 does.

delecti2• 2 years ago

It seems people have achieved that: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/v22ddf/guide_how...

WhatIsDukkha4• 2 years ago

That's over wifi not usb.

Even a bluetooth mouse has too much latency for many games.

yjftsjthsd-h2• 2 years ago

To clarify: You want the Steam Deck to run USB gadget mode and use that to expose its input devices to the other machine?

If so... while searching to see if the SD supports gadget mode (answer: yes) I happened across https://github.com/Frederic98/GadgetDeck - have you tried that?

WhatIsDukkha4• 2 years ago

This looks closer then anything I've seen so far, thanks!

From what I can discern its missing important bits of the controller and doesn't have any steaminput profile etc so it's clunky still.

Worth poking at though.

edit - to clarify, ideally steaminput would be tricked on the host to think that it "was" a steamdeck so all the mapping features would be available. I don't really need another usb game controller its more the steamdeck touchpad etc.

dingensundso• 2 years ago

I don't own a steamdeck. But searching around the web a bit I found out that raw-gadget^1 was merged into the linux kernel in 5.7.

And AFAIU that would enable proxying of USB devices.

[1] https://github.com/xairy/raw-gadget

MisterTea3• 2 years ago

On Plan 9 I just rimport the remote machines /dev/usb. Since this is all over 9P it can go over any 2-way pipe, even rs232.

all23• 2 years ago

And, the linux kernel has plan 9 FS drivers. [0]

[0] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/9p.html

alchemist1e9• 2 years ago

Is Plan 9 alive and kicking?

MisterTea3• 2 years ago

http://9front.org/releases/

rcarmo• 2 years ago

Depends. There are still many enthusiasts (even new ports to random chipsets), but there is also a bit of a schism between the 9front folk and… let’s say our current timeline. The good news is that there are interesting things going on, fortunately none of which related to current tech trends.

yjftsjthsd-h2• 2 years ago

Plan 9 is like BSD; the original is no longer developed, but its forks ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#Derivati... ) are healthy enough.

tombert3• 2 years ago

There was a thing that was around 10 or 11 years ago called "Wireless USB", and it was actually kind of cool. It did exactly what it sounds like, you could plug in two different arbitrary USB devices into hubs or a computer that supported wireless USB, and the computer would just recognize it as a vanilla USB device. I don't actually know why it never caught on, I thought it was neat, and it seemed to work fine. I guess due to the popularity and ubiquity of bluetooth?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB

EDIT: Looks like it was more than 10 years ago, circa 2009 or so. Time has no meaning.

codetrotter2• 2 years ago

First time I heard about Wireless USB was just the other day, in a video looking at a luggable computer from 2006.

https://youtu.be/OO5hYhdxIuk

Video is worth a watch although it also doesn’t give an answer for why Wireless USB actually disappeared.

I was wondering after watching that video, if it could be due to security concerns? Like, is the Wireless USB protocol encrypted? And if so, does it use sufficiently strong encryption?

I did find a document that talks a bit about Wireless USB encryption.

https://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/appnotes/wireless_usb_e...

tombert3• 2 years ago

I actually saw that video, but I had heard of Wireless USB for awhile. My manager at my first job after dropping out of college the first time got it for his computer and he was super excited.

At least according to Wikipedia, it was encrypted.

hbossy• 2 years ago

Most USB devices either rely on the connection to provide power or are too clunky to move around, so having a wire doesn't really matter.

y04nn• 2 years ago

I recently found out that a manufacturer (TI, NXP, murata, infineon?) was demonstrating a USB2 live camera capture using a UWB (Ultra-Wide-Band) short range wireless transmission. But I can't found the source again.

hex4def6• 2 years ago

I remember actually testing that stuff out when it came out. I was working as an intern at Philips Semiconductors in their Wi-Fi chip division. Speaking of time has no meaning... :)

I think there were a couple of consumer products that got released - Linksys and netgear perhaps? They consisted of a USB Hub + Dongle.

They actually worked ok, but the speed would drop off quickly with distance. Across the room, and you'd be at 50% of the rated speed, at best.

The technology was interesting. Basically they were transmitting over a whole slew of spectrum simultaneously (from like 2.5GHz to 5.5GHz), but they kept the transmit power low enough that it didn't exceed some FCC threshold.

monocasa3• 2 years ago

Wireless USB was also the format used by the Xbox 360 controllers.

themoonisachees• 2 years ago

Huh. I had a 360 controller and a wireless adapter for my pc. It died a few years back though.

taneq2• 2 years ago

Does that mean they’ll work with any wireless USB adapter? I have a 360 controller but haven’t been able to source a USB dongle to use it with my computer.

dmead3• 2 years ago

I've been saying this should be a thing for decades. Not sure why I never heard of this.

jsxlite• 2 years ago

When Mac first took out the DVD drive, there was also a away to mount remote DVD drive. I guess the push was to get everyone on the network. So stuff like that just didn't take off.

rapjr9• 2 years ago

It was a very limited implementation of wireless USB. You could only plug in two USB devices and only particular devices worked, if I remember correctly. My suspicion is that the reason it went off the market was because it used UWB and the government put a lot of restrictions on its use so that it couldn't be repurposed for use in military applications. It's very difficult to intercept an encrypted UWB communication link, or to even know it is present. It essentially just looks like a slight raising of the noise floor across a wide band of frequencies. UWB was required to get the necessary bandwidth, doing USB across WiFi would probably cause timing errors in devices because it would be so slow (at least using 802.11b which was in wide use at the time). I think hardware makers really hated the idea also because a successful wireless USB system would allow sharing hardware between many computers instead of buying a device per computer (consumer NAS was expensive back then). It was also very expensive, about $400 I think, which was a lot at the time for something that had limited functionality. I remember thinking about buying one and decided it wasn't worth it.

sandreas2• 2 years ago

Sounds a bit like USB/IP (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB/IP).

Is this a new thing?

eqvinox• 2 years ago

Both projects seem to be >10 years old at this point… might be a case of "convergent evolution"?

sandreas2• 2 years ago

Probably... I thought of passing my iPod Nano 7g through USB/IP to my Proxmox Windows iTunes VM, but I never had the urge to do it. Although it'd probably work and would be great in combinaton with Wireguard on vacation, I did not want to setup a "risky" driver / kernel module on my main proxmox server :-) USB passthrough always was enough.

ktm5j• 2 years ago

I'm on my phone so I can only do so much digging, but from the usbip sourceforge page that's linked above, it says that development has moved into the Linux kernel:

  For Linux, the source code of usbip was merged into the staging tree, and finally has been moved to the mainline since Linux-3.17. Development is ongoing in the kernel community, not here. Linux distributions will provide binary packages of usbip.*

andrewmcwatters• 2 years ago

Remember Remote Disc from Mac OS X? https://support.apple.com/en-us/101323

paulkon• 2 years ago

I'm running virtualhere on thousands of raspberry pi's sharing various USB devices to cloud machines over vpn. It's been working without issues for years now. Seems to be a solo developer in Australia that's been working on it for a really long time. https://www.virtualhere.com/

brcmthrowaway• 2 years ago

What possible use case is this for

zymhan• 2 years ago

This USB server solution is perfect for allowing USB devices to be used remotely over a LAN network, over the Internet, or in the Cloud without the USB device needing to be physically attached to remote client machine.

kotaKat• 2 years ago

$49 and a byzantine per-server-cannot-be-transferred license is not palatable to me. I hate hardware-bound licensing.

rrr_oh_man2• 2 years ago

Would you rather like a monthly subscription per client?

eps• 2 years ago

Oh, knock it off.

The reality is that licenses must be restricted because people cheat, steal and pirate. Hate them instead. Besides $49 is dirt-cheap for what it is, especially considering it covers all future versions.

theogravity• 2 years ago

thousands of raspberry pi's

so you've spent 1000s * $49 for the license?

rrr_oh_man2• 2 years ago

Why not?

msbroadf2• 2 years ago

Correct, i am a solo developer working on it since 2010 :)

dmead3• 2 years ago

This sounds like a cool use case for my observatory control box. Do you ever have issues with latency pushing the bounds of the USB spec wrt latency? Can I use this with my camera?

zbrozek• 2 years ago

I love your website. It's clear and to the point. I immediately knew what your product did; thank you.

rawbot• 2 years ago

Thanks for your work. I tried using it to use the official Gamecube Controller USB Adapter through Steam Link, but there was some spiking noise that killed playability. Nevertheless, I think it is amazing stuff.

fasteo• 2 years ago

>> I'm running virtualhere on thousands of raspberry pi's

Offtopic.

Mind sharing what are you doing with thousands of pi's ? Thanks

c_o_n_v_e_x• 2 years ago

So basically this a USB device server but you can BYO hardware. Use cases for USB device servers (according to https://www.seh-technology.com/products/usb-deviceserver.htm...):

external disks

dongles

card readers

telephone systems

barcode scanners

medical devices

mobile gauges

output devices

audio/video streaming devices

scanners etc.

...connecting a computer to a USB device that is further away than what USB is physically limited to (distance wise).

2024throwaway2• 2 years ago

This would have been great for me to have around 25 years ago, when I wanted to mount a USB web cam in my bedroom window on the second floor and connect it to a computer in my basement. I was a dumb middle school kid and just spliced the usb wires onto Ethernet cable ends, and plugged them into the existing Ethernet run. That’s when I learned about maximum USB lengths the hard way, by frying some perfectly good hardware.

dTal• 2 years ago

I would not expect this hack to fry hardware - at worst, voltage drop, interference, signal distortion, and impedance mismatch will simply cause the device to not work. But I've successfully run USB 2.0 over 30ft cables despite it being illegal per spec, so your idea wasn't radically wrongheaded. "Fried" is an extreme result - are you sure you didn't just connect V+ and V- backwards or something?

2024throwaway2• 2 years ago

It being 25 years ago, I’m not sure of anything. But glad to know I’m not too far off or alone.

worewood• 2 years ago

Yeah, probably just jerry-rigged an extension and plugged V+ into a data line or something like that. Properly wired, it just wouldn't detect the device.

dotnet00• 2 years ago

Doesn't WSL2 use something very similar for forwarding usb devices from Windows to the Linux VM? Through "usbipd"

naikrovek5• 2 years ago

Yes, Microsoft has documentation on how to set up USB/IP for connecting USB devices to the WSL2 VM. It works quite well, in my experience.

tamimio• 2 years ago

Funny how yesterday I was using Winding Sandbox to test a software and wanted to connect an iPhone to it, problem was that there’s not interface like a fully fledged VM and had to use VMware instead, maybe this will do the trick?

naikrovek5• 2 years ago

USB/IP works fine on Windows, and there are a couple of good open source packages for it. It works well.

hsbauauvhabzb• 2 years ago

What’s input latency and throughput on this like? Would it support near native keyboard / mouse, webcam or display output? What about mass storage devices?

kimown• 2 years ago

https://www.usb-over-network.com/usb-over-network-download.h...

I have used this software for adb debugging in rdp window10, it's really cool, but it don't meet all cases.

j45• 2 years ago

A software based Tibbo for usb, awesome!

https://tibbo.com/

klinquist• 2 years ago

It may not be well known that VMWare Fusion supports this.

I run Windows on a Mac Mini functioning as an ESXi server.

From my Macbook Pro, I can connect to it with Fusion Pro and attach USB devices to the Windows VM. I use this to program ham radios and troubleshoot my vehicle with Toyota Techstream + USB OBD2 adapter.

lynx23• 2 years ago

usbip is a thing, is even a Debian package...

apt-get• 2 years ago

I'd like to get a VDI infrastructure setup for me and my partner -- something that enables both of us to run our computers with a single big machine, and not have cables running everywhere through the house, while being able to sit wherever we want and use our infra from any given place.

At the moment, I've brainstormed:

- A main server that runs some type 1 hypervisor (Xen or Proxmox, will need to see which is more adequate)

- Light "client" devices (laptop, for example), that may either be connected in a wired manner to the server (e.g. separate desks), or remoting into it through Wireguard. Each desk will feature a KVM-style setup with a docking station that offers screens, keyboard, and a range of USB ports.

- Individual VMs for running our respective OSes to our preference, some flavor of linux distro. Inputs from the client device (e.g. USB, Keyboard, Screen) should be forwarded / matched to the VM.

- A windows VM for gaming, running two sessions for each of us: GPU passthrough is a must. I would like to make use of Looking Glass somehow, if possible either through the Linux VM on the same server, or on the client machine. The latter would probably be better for performance, I suppose, given you don't have to forward input devices twice... but I'm also worried about whether the buffer-copy mechanisms from Looking Glass would work with such a setup.

So far, I'm looking into Moonlight/Sunshine as a general desktop redirection setup: my hope is that I can pass something close to direct framebuffers on an ethernet connection while at home, and switch to compression while I'm away, hoping to achieve as little latency as possible in all cases (so giving absolute priority on the host to the streaming process, if possible, kind of like an RT system). One notable thing is that Sunshine by itself doesn't support generic USB redirection. Has anyone tried using usbredir for this purpose?

In general, it's hard to find relevant information for this kind of home hypervisor setup with a focus on gaming/latency and general transparency all around... would appreciate tips if anyone's attempted something similar before. Thanks!

actionfromafar• 2 years ago

There is also USB-IP. https://usbip.sourceforge.net/

wtf_is_up• 2 years ago

I used this the other day with some of my proxmox VMs and it worked amazingly well. Pretty nice to be able to pass my usb via spice instead if needing to plug it into the server.

usbredir: A protocol for sending USB device traffic over a network connection

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