USB device sharing via network

[porina]

Anyone have experience with USB device sharing over network? I see there are products available but wonder if there are any preferred ones.

 

The use case I have is that there is software I use at work which is protected by a dongle. It would be really nice to have access to the dongle regardless of the location I'm in, without having to carry it around myself (increased risk of loss or damage). I hope to have the dongle left in a work PC I have control of. When remote, I can join the same network using VPN. I'm just wondering if this specific use case works well. I have already asked the vendor if they support a network license model, and they don't. I will be the sole user of the software/dongle with one instance at any given time. This is mainly for my convenience. This is NOT looking at using it at the same time in more than one place.

[Bombastinator]

The whole point of dongle security is to require exactly that carrying around thing.  I suspect there will be serious stuff to prevent exactly that behavior.  If it could be accessed from another computer it could be accessed from any computer in the world.

[Master Disaster]

16 minutes ago, porina said:

Anyone have experience with USB device sharing over network? I see there are products available but wonder if there are any preferred ones.

 

The use case I have is that there is software I use at work which is protected by a dongle. It would be really nice to have access to the dongle regardless of the location I'm in, without having to carry it around myself (increased risk of loss or damage). I hope to have the dongle left in a work PC I have control of. When remote, I can join the same network using VPN. I'm just wondering if this specific use case works well. I have already asked the vendor if they support a network license model, and they don't. I will be the sole user of the software/dongle with one instance at any given time. This is mainly for my convenience. This is NOT looking at using it at the same time in more than one place.

It wouldn't work. The software will be hard coded to check the USB bus for the key and if its connected over a network it wouldn't be on the USB bus.

[porina]

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The whole point of dongle security is to require exactly that carrying around thing.  I suspect there will be serious stuff to prevent exactly that behavior.  If it could be accessed from another computer it could be accessed from any computer in the world.

My understanding is these dongles have some crypto processing inside them which means they will continuously communicate while in active use. You can't even unplug the dongle while it is in use without the software being deactivated. So only one active connection is possible. I just need a point to point USB over network software to enable that functionality. Nothing is broken in licensing, one instance of software can work with it.

 

Just now, Master Disaster said:

It wouldn't work. The software will be hard coded to check the USB bus for the key and if its connected over a network it wouldn't be on the USB bus.

The software based solutions on offer virtualise a local USB port which is then connected to the remote physical one. It should look transparent. If it does or not, I don't know.

 

 

Has anyone actually used these products or am I just going to get endless speculation? I was kinda hoping to narrow down some potential offerings in this area before trying it myself.