Belkin starts shipping the Network USB Hub

It was supposed to ship in June, but it looks like Belkin is finally shipping the Network USB Hub this week. The five-port USB hub "simulates a direct USB connection" that allows you to use all your USB devices over the network -- and special caching software even lets you use USB 2.0 devices at full speed. Looks like Windows users can nab one of these now for $129 -- Mac users are still waiting on driver support.

[Via PC World]

[Xzavier @ Sep 20th 2007 4:26PM]

Vader would Approve!

[George Muller @ Sep 20th 2007 4:30PM]

We have had these at Best Buy for a while now. They look like they will be awesome

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8374519&st=belkin+network+hub&type=product&id=1178925992366

[paul-i @ Sep 20th 2007 4:31PM]

Why do they make something the dimensions (or so it looks) of the mac mini but then not have mac support nailed? :)

[John Doe @ Sep 21st 2007 1:27AM]

Because Apple represents 5% and no one gives a shit...PS I'm typing this on a MBP. *shrugs* The truth is the truth.

[paul-i @ Sep 21st 2007 4:29AM]

Oh I know the market share is tint but therefore why build it to the same dimensions as the mac mini, its not like it has to be this size and shape, if anything for most people it will be annoying as it wont fit anywhere easily.

[Daniel @ Sep 20th 2007 4:32PM]

a new electronic product with a piano black finish? who would've thought?

[Luigi193 @ Sep 20th 2007 4:33PM]

That look pretty nice!

[Jamie Nelson @ Sep 20th 2007 4:38PM]

I picked one of these up at best buy about 3 weeks ago, it kicks ace!! Hooked up my printer and 1TB drive to it. Nice interface, super easy setup

[Bobo @ Sep 20th 2007 4:38PM]

Nice idea but if Belkin is the manufacturer, I'll wait for the reviews.

[Goldaar @ Sep 20th 2007 4:46PM]

Been at Circuit City for more than 2 months....

[metalhawk @ Sep 20th 2007 4:49PM]

Shipping?!? :) I've had one for several weeks now. They've already updated the drivers twice.

Works fine - you sometimes have to trade control of the peripheral in question, but otherwise seems nice. Better than usb print servers which, as far as I've seen, are hit and miss on what printers they support.

Still waiting for the Mac software, however.

[Teejay @ Sep 20th 2007 4:49PM]

for a device that ripped one of apples design books, i would figure it having support for mac from the box.. but no..

[Reader @ Sep 21st 2007 3:27AM]

Right...

I forgot, Apple was the first to make a square with rounded edges.

[Teejay @ Sep 21st 2007 3:29AM]

=P -pats your back- Im just frustrated the mac isnt supported.. ignore my fanboyism >w

[ChrisG @ Sep 20th 2007 5:01PM]

that would go nice with that new piano black printer from Samsung that Engadget was talking about the other day.

[ironjaw @ Sep 20th 2007 5:01PM]

This looks pretty exciting, I've several UBB2 external HDDs I'd love to turn into NAS devices - only one thing - it runs Linux supposedly - same as my NSLU2 did - only caveat was that it couldnt write to NTFS formatted drives.

Guess I'll have to wait on some reviews.

[tm36usa @ Sep 20th 2007 5:22PM]

Uhh, ive had one of these since early july, bought it at best buy for $100. It works ok, but only one pc can connect at a time. and windows only so no linux support. (afaik)

[Greg Baz @ Sep 20th 2007 5:28PM]

I bought one 3 weeks ago ad circus city 3 weeks ago. Does not work like nas. The devices show up as USB devices in the control pannel of the computer.
I plugged the rj45 into a wireless game adapter. Works great its fast enough Thor I would not try to transfer huge files (1gb+).

[Andrew Davidson @ Sep 20th 2007 5:34PM]

Looks pretty sexy. I might pick one up.

[Ksilebo @ Sep 20th 2007 5:54PM]

I just bought one at Best Buy today, they've been in the store for like, months.

[dUN @ Sep 20th 2007 5:57PM]

Get a 20$ USB-HUB and an Airport Extreme! Faster Speed and Less Hassle!

[scott @ Sep 20th 2007 6:10PM]

more expensive, can't sync you iPod wirelessly, cant use anything but HFS+ formatted drives and printers...

yeah, that makes much sense.

[yoshi @ Sep 20th 2007 9:02PM]

Can you sync your iPod wirelessly with the Belkin? And what is an HFS+ formatted printer? Never heard of that....

Anyway, like others, I'll wait for both the reviews and a few more driver updates - at a minimum.

[k @ Sep 22nd 2007 1:16AM]

Actually the airport extreme works with fat formatted drives. I use it to backup my vista laptop all the time. I also have a hub connected so I can use multiple printers and hard drives.

[shaliron @ Sep 21st 2007 2:32AM]

Actually you can use FAT16 formatted hard drives as well.

You got to admit it though, this thing does look remarkably like a black Airport Extreme, though this one has a more desirable feature set than the AE, just due to the multitude of USB ports over Ethernet ports, which is really more practical (at least for me).

[GazzyC @ Sep 20th 2007 6:20PM]

I like the idea of controlling USB devices in remote locations, I bet it would be of good use in the industrial world as an alternative to those USB to Ethernet extenders!

[spam_from_engadget @ Sep 20th 2007 6:23PM]

Has anyone opened theirs up? I'm very curious to know what's in there, i.e. what processor, how much memory.

Some benchmarks would also be interesting.

And does it work with isochronous devices, e.g. cameras?

[Marc W. @ Sep 20th 2007 6:49PM]

if only it was gigabit and not 10/100 then i would buy one

[LegendZ28 @ Sep 20th 2007 7:31PM]

I thought everything just works on a mac?

[Fritz Larco @ Sep 20th 2007 8:12PM]

I had it (like 2 months ago), tested it for one day, didn't like it, returned it. I have an XP MCE 2005 laptop and wanted to stream my USB TV tuner wirelessly, meaning using the laptop as a portable tv (sweet). But the thing maxed at 1-2MB/s..wouldn't work for High bandwidth demand, which the tuner required. And also when transferring files from/to my ext hard drive, 1-2MB/s was quite slow. It also disconnected for no reasons at times..Will wait for a better solution.

[TrueBlue @ Sep 20th 2007 8:13PM]

I also bought one a few weeks back and it works great on a non-64bit OS machine. I am running XP 64 bit and can see the device but can not assess anything on it. My 32 bit machine has no problem. I am sure I am doing something wrong...

[Tomahawk @ Sep 20th 2007 9:12PM]

I'm confused can't I get the same functionality out of a regular USB hub hooked up to my Airport Extreme http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/ ? Not only that but I also get a 802.11n, and a gigabit connection.

[getz76 @ Sep 21st 2007 12:54AM]

Rule of thumb: anything that is a "network device" that requires special drivers usually sucks.

[metalhawk @ Sep 21st 2007 8:59AM]

Some comments above make it look like you could use this to replace a wireless router (people are comparing it to the AE). This isn't wireless *anything* - this is a wired USB hub that you can attach to your router, then USE it wirelessly.

You need the additional software/drivers for the OS (be it mac, windows or linux) to see these devices, which are attached to USB ports on another IP in your network, as *locally* attached USB devices. That's how it works, what makes it robust to many devices, but makes it require software and require the users on multiple machines to "trade" the hardware. That is, if you mount a USB drive on machine one, machine two can't mount it until machine one lets it go. You can set the software up so this isn't an issue with printers (there's an option to grab the device, print, and let go, thus all users can print at any time..)

[Calvin3z @ Sep 21st 2007 2:13PM]

Bought one of these in June when they first came out on sale for $99. I like it. Very easy setup I thought.

[engadget @ Sep 21st 2007 2:44PM]

--ADD USB Support to VMWARE ESX--
Digi has a similar device called AnywhereUSB that my company uses to add USB support to Virtual Machines. Since VMWare ESX has no means of providing USB Connections, Network based USB is the best alternative. Unfortunately the Digi model doesnt do USB2 from what I can tell. It also costs about DOUBLE the price of the Belkin shown here.

Guess I will have to get one and see how it compares to the Digi version

Digi AnywhereUSB: http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb.jsp

PS: If you try this on VMWare, you need to extract usbd.sys from your Windows XP/2003 CD into %systemroot%\system32\drivers BEFORE you install the Virtual ISB Software. Since ESX doesnt support USB, that driver is not installed by default.

[kballs @ Sep 21st 2007 9:12PM]

How can it run USB 2.0 devices at full speed (480mbps) when it only has 10/100 ethernet? It needs gigabit ethernet!

[JakeD @ Oct 6th 2007 10:06PM]

engadget thanks for the tip about the usbd.sys! that did the trick for us and the belkin works great on vms! appreciate the tip.

[Sam Winter @ Oct 10th 2007 7:52PM]

1TB drive on a networked USB connection? Thats crazy talk. I won't dare use a REGULAR USB connection for a large external HDD. I wonder how long it would take you to even transfer 1% to or from the drive (10GB) a week or so? On a side note, It pisses me off that I've used firewire 400/800 external drives for YEARS -- even since the late 1990's in highschool and now it seems nearly every external HDD these days except for the very top-end only come with USB. And with eSATA connections now out, we should be MOVING FORWARD NOT BACKWARD. For those who are still confused, USB 2.0 gets NOWHERE near the theoretical max transfer rate of 480mbps. Firewire-400mbps blows it away because of technical issues, e.g. overhead, protocol architecture, etc.

However, it would be interesting to see how REAL wireless USB operates compared to this wannabe 802.11 thing.