Ethernet over USB

[unijab]

Anyone have any experience with it?

 

Im not talking about having a cat5/6 cable used with a usb adapter.

 

Im talking about setting up a USB connection to send IP traffic over it.

[XTankSlayerX]

I would imagine it would be fine?

[arnavvr]

But make sure you have USB 3

[unijab]

How do you set it up on windows?

 

 

When I plug two windows machines together, nothing happens.

[KTFO|SGTmoody]

When you plug your adapter in make sure it's drivers have installed correctly. Do this by going in to device manager and looking for any yellow warning icons.

To connect two computers togeather you have to use a cross over Ethernet cable for it to work.

If you want to know if your cable is cross over or not look at the colours in the plug.

Cross over will have on one end.

Orange stripe orange. Starting on the left finishing on brown on the right.

And on the other end of the cable it should start green stripe green.

[unijab]

Im not asking about cat5/6 cables, im talking solely a USB connection to have the ethernet protocol running over it.

[SOUTHwarrior]

I tether my cell phone to my desktop because the internet at my apartment is crappy. and with usb 2.0 it hits max 4glte speeds. around 40 down 5 up and 70-80ms ping.

[KTFO|SGTmoody]

Im not asking about cat5/6 cables, im talking solely a USB connection to have the ethernet protocol running over it.

So what your saying is you solely want to connect two pc's togeather over one usb cable and then transfer ip data over it..? I think the best answer is you can't.

Why do you want to do this?

Why can't you just connect them via a Ethernet cable?

[CWP]

Perhaps it would be best to describe what you would like to achieve, instead of asking for possibility with one scenario.

 

As moody said, it is not possible. It has something to do with motherboards expecting to HOST devices, not be a device itself. The closest single-cable would be the Laplink USB cable, but even that is only proprietarily used for transferring files between two computers, and not about sending network packets between the two. The closest to what you describe at this time is to have two USB network adapters and a network to hook up between the two.

[unijab]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_USB

[CWP]

Having looked at the wiki article, I have to point out that (emphasis mine):

 

There are many low-cost commercial adapters available to do this.

 

which, to me, sounds like you cannot just find any regular USB-A to USB-A cable, connect the two computers together and expect it to work. You need to get a cable that is dedicated to this exact purpose.

[unijab]

I think there should be a software way to do it for windows, from what I read so far it's built-in to Linux as usbnet.

[CWP]

Here's a link to the "usbnet" driver you mentioned: http://www.linux-usb.org/usbnet/. Of note, it explains the regular USB-A to USB-A cables and why it does not work:

 

Yes, you may occasionally see "A-to-A" cables for sale; don't waste your money buying them. Those cables are forbidden in USB, since the electrical connections don't make any sense at all. (If you try to use one, you might even short out your USB electronics and so need to buy a new system.) Basically, they're missing the extra electronics shown above, which is necessary to let a USB "master" (host) talk to another one, by making both talk through a USB "slave" (device). (There is one time you may need such cables: when you're working with a hardware development system where the single USB port can be configured - for development only! - in either master or slave roles.)

 
That last part about hardware development system is not something one can easily reconfigure on consumer products, because, hey, it even says: "for development only!"

 

So, if you still insist on this mission to run a network over USB, I will have to repeat my previous assessment: You need to get a specialized cable.