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Natanji ‏✅ @natanji

Anybody have a recommendation for a free (ideally FOSS), cross-platform program that can forward USB devices over the network? Something you tried and which is actually working? I'd like to plug my USB scanner into my home Linux server and use it on my Windows 10 desktop.

@natanji
It is called USBIP and there is a Linux server and clients for different operating systems.

@txt_file Did you try that out? Because I found that on Google too, but there seems like it doesn't work at all. Can only find compiled Windows binaries for different/incompatible versions than what is available for Linux.

@natanji
Tried it a couple years ago. With an AVM FritzBox as server and the AVM driver for Windows on a WinDOS XP notebook.

@natanji @txt_file there is noone actively working on the windowsside afaik, we had students in erlangen doing lots on the linux side, so that it actually could encrypt/authenticate though ...

@mxk Problem is, it seems hard to get an outdated Windows-compatible version working nowadays :/ Can't just install a package from the repo...

@natanji jup, unfortunately, the original protocol had no versioning, so no good way of keeping compatibility (and honestly, I can not advise using those old versions of usbip ...)

@mxk Why not drop the claim that the software is cross-platform, then, when it effectively isn't anymore?
Also, does this mean AVM uses very insecure software in their devices?

@natanji it remains the only software I know, that is OSS and can do this. I don't know if they cleaned up the windows code and you need to 100% trust your network for the old versions under this requirements it might be okay to use, as far as I can tell