The lan thing makes sense, I could see that. Still an impressive amount of patch cables, if true. Plus those adapters are cheap but not dirt cheap, right?
You don’t actually need to adapt out of it. There are Ethernet-over-USB switches that output to USB directly. So all you need are USB cables, and you need them anyway to provide power. So all you are doing (compared to just power over USB) is to use an Ethernet-over-USB switch instead of an USB PSU.
The one they advertise on that website has 24 USB outputs, but I’m sure you can find bigger ones. And from them you only need a single patch cable to the next proper switch.
There’s about 100 phones on the panel and another 100 on the other side, so that would be maybe 8 or 9 of these switches, all wired together into a 10 port switch and that one then is fed by a single input line.
The upside for a setup like this is that the bandwidth requirements per device are minuscule. It’s a lot of devices, but they aren’t doing anything for most of the time. That’s quite the opposite of what we usually plan for when designing a regular network where if we have hundreds of devices we expect them to actually do something as well.
The product you linked is for USB devices to be able I be used over a network. One common use-case is getting hardware license tokens (on a USB dongle) accessible to a virtual machine…especially when that VM can move dynamically between hosting servers for load-balancing or fail-over.
The closest I’ve seen is a cart intended for tablets or Chromebooks that gives 60W PD + Ethernet over one USB-C port. So something similar exists. I think with this though, you had to bring your own Ethernet switch.
I would love to see something like that, but with active cooling and 180-240W PD. And probably dual L6-30s, if not more, to power the damn thing.
But even if you can’t find an off-the-shelf solution for this, it’s trivial to DIY one. One USB controller can feed 127 devices maximum. You’ll obviously need powered USB hubs for that, but that’s not an issue. This works because when you enable USB tethering, the phone can be in USB device mode while getting IP over USB. The main issue here is the routes, but if you use an app that creates a local VPN on the phone to capture the traffic you can then tunnel that traffic through the tethering connection, using it in the reverse direction. Now you only need a PC with many USB controllers (easily done using PCI-E extension cards) and you are done.
Setup is a little complicated, but you only need to configure it once and then copy it over to all the phones.
I would love to see something like that, but with active cooling and 180-240W PD. And probably dual L6-30s, if not more, to power the damn thing.
I haven’t seen any devices so far that can deliver high wattage on multiple ports at the same time, so I think the PD is probably the bigger limit.
You don’t actually need to adapt out of it. There are Ethernet-over-USB switches that output to USB directly. So all you need are USB cables, and you need them anyway to provide power. So all you are doing (compared to just power over USB) is to use an Ethernet-over-USB switch instead of an USB PSU.
Here’s the first one I found on google: https://www.digi.com/products/networking/infrastructure-management/usb-connectivity/usb-over-ip/anywhereusb
The one they advertise on that website has 24 USB outputs, but I’m sure you can find bigger ones. And from them you only need a single patch cable to the next proper switch.
There’s about 100 phones on the panel and another 100 on the other side, so that would be maybe 8 or 9 of these switches, all wired together into a 10 port switch and that one then is fed by a single input line.
The upside for a setup like this is that the bandwidth requirements per device are minuscule. It’s a lot of devices, but they aren’t doing anything for most of the time. That’s quite the opposite of what we usually plan for when designing a regular network where if we have hundreds of devices we expect them to actually do something as well.
This is USB over IP, not IP over USB.
The product you linked is for USB devices to be able I be used over a network. One common use-case is getting hardware license tokens (on a USB dongle) accessible to a virtual machine…especially when that VM can move dynamically between hosting servers for load-balancing or fail-over.
The closest I’ve seen is a cart intended for tablets or Chromebooks that gives 60W PD + Ethernet over one USB-C port. So something similar exists. I think with this though, you had to bring your own Ethernet switch.
I would love to see something like that, but with active cooling and 180-240W PD. And probably dual L6-30s, if not more, to power the damn thing.
Then take this one: https://m.made-in-china.com/product/USB-to-Ethernet-8-Ports-Switch-2079770325.html
But even if you can’t find an off-the-shelf solution for this, it’s trivial to DIY one. One USB controller can feed 127 devices maximum. You’ll obviously need powered USB hubs for that, but that’s not an issue. This works because when you enable USB tethering, the phone can be in USB device mode while getting IP over USB. The main issue here is the routes, but if you use an app that creates a local VPN on the phone to capture the traffic you can then tunnel that traffic through the tethering connection, using it in the reverse direction. Now you only need a PC with many USB controllers (easily done using PCI-E extension cards) and you are done.
Setup is a little complicated, but you only need to configure it once and then copy it over to all the phones.
I haven’t seen any devices so far that can deliver high wattage on multiple ports at the same time, so I think the PD is probably the bigger limit.
Wow that’s crazy!