Virtual USB technology ®

In the age of informational flows, all communications are moving to ignore time and distance limits. Mobility is one of most wanted property of every device.

Serial interfaces have many limitations such as wire transfer length, number of simultaneously connected devices, only particular computer operator can work with device etc. Slight attempts of sharing were made by OS vendor (printer, disk) but it is not enough. To remove all these restrictions and bring mobility and accessibility to serial devices our company created @nywhere™ technology and in particular Virtual USB technology®.

The main goal is serial stream redirection over network and Internet. It means that the device, which has serial interface (COM, USB, IEEE 1394 FireWire) can be easily accessed from any network-connected node. Now we have redirection systems for COM and USB as the most common serial interfaces.

To reach the goal we created client-server system, which :

loads device driver on server side (remote machine)
redirects all USD data packets (URB) to client (where USB device installed)
submits packets to real hardware.

So we get emulated USB device on server side. It should be mentioned that with Virtual USB engine, redirection process is fully transparent for host and target operating systems.

Block-scheme of USB stack (before breaking) on client side:

virtual usb technology
Figure 1.1 – Simplified model of normal URB flow (some levels are excluded)

On server side there is no USB devices before breaking.

USB@nywhere data flow Block-scheme:

Figure 1.2 –Model of URB flow.

It should be mentioned that server side has virtual USB bus, which enumerates devices. So it is not a part of existing USB stack. But it works like real USB hub driver.

The main functionality of our Virtual Hub driver is to redirect URB through LAN interface. Fake driver (usbtst.sys) takes this URB and submits it to real usb hub.

Virtual USB technology supports NT based OS (2000, XP, 2003) but we are going to support CE kernel because it is very attractive to use USB equipment from handset terminals.

Typical system for work with USB@nywhere is:

Processor: Athlon or Pentium 1Ghz and higher
RAM: 256-512Mb
OS: 2000 and higher

Note: USB port required on client side.

To reach high performance we created special adaptive module FastBlob® that allows reducing network timings and transferring data without essential delays. We spend less than 30% of the whole transfer time during full speed transfers for redirection (if network bandwidth is sufficient) that is normal for errorless device interaction.

To reject possible threats we created own Check’n’Recovery® engine.

Threat	Solution
DoS attck	List of trusted clients
Traffic sniffing	Secure SSL connection
Buffer overrun exploiting	Strong error checking algorithms

For network transport we use TCP/IP stack so it’s absolutely common to use our system for wireless transfers. It means that you can make your USB devices wireless without any upgrade and access it from any node connected to WiFi or WiMax.

We're constantly searching for new models of integration with existing systems. We closely cooperate with virtual platform creators, mobile platforms developers to move out borders of USB devices means. Also we have own wireless packets for different kinds of USB devices. The secret is in build-in WLAN station with USB@nywhere device workstation as firmware. This configuration allows USB device be fully independent of desktop computer and removes USB interface limitations.

We are open for cooperation with you – together we’ll make the world mobile!

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