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USB MultiSwitch hub hits prototype stage


Thanks to those fancy chips from SMSC we saw back in April, USB MultiSwitch hubs are just around the corner, bringing convenient USB device sharing to your desktop early next year. Now SMSC has a prototype all prepped, and has answered a few more questions regarding the technology. It sounds like implementation is pretty straight forward: a MultiSwitch-equipped PC can share any of its USB-connected devices with any other MultiSwitch PC via a single USB cable, or you can mix things up with a MultiSwitch hub which provides its own sharing chops. Unfortunately, multiple users can't access a shared device simultaneously, you have to instead specify which user is using each device, which could get cumbersome. SMSC's tech does support Wireless USB, but only "upstream" to the client PC -- the shared devices themselves have to be wired USB connections. Still, despite these limitation we're sure we'll be able to find plenty of uses for the spiffy new hubs when they hit the market in "early 2007."