Tackling USB Distance Limitations with USB Extender

USB cables are often faced with distance limitation problems pertaining to the USB peripheral devices. The use of USB extender takes care of this problem quite effectively. There are at present three categories of USB extender available in the stores which include the Cat5 extender, the fiber optic extender and the wireless extender.

The Cat5 USB extender is cost effective and an extension of about 150feet of the USB peripheral can be done over the Cat5 cables. This type of USB extender functions using plug and play mechanism. It consists of a local transmitter and receiver unit, and is very simple to work on without any device drivers or additional software needed to operate it.

Two versions of Cat5 USB extender are present a powered 4-port hub USB extender and a single port USB extender. There is also another model of the Cat5 USB extender, the USB 2.0 extender, which works over the Cat5 cables, and supports the peripheral parts of the USB. The speed of this USB extender is around 480Mb/s and is functional up to a distance of 330 feet. There are two types of this extender, a point to point version and a 4 port hub version, which holds up to four peripheral systems.

The USB peripherals, which have fast speeds and stellar performance, can be linked to the computer, which can be placed at a distance of 100 feet from them with the help of wireless USB extender. This is one of the newest products available in this category and functions by linking the sender device to the USB source or the computer. The wireless signals are later transmitted to the receiver. A maximum of four USB peripherals can be made to function with this USB extender. The most beneficial effect of using this device is the complete absence of wires thereby saving lots of desktop space. It works both with high speed and low speed USB peripherals and can be used with Vista, Windows XP, UNIX, Linux and Mac OS. Both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 are functional with this device.

The USB 2.0 fiber extender is another device, which is used in case of long distance transmission with the help of single mode or multimode fiber optic cables. Low, total and high speed USB peripherals can function with this device which is powered remotely using a transmitter and receiver unit.

This hardware facilitates the placement of the USB peripherals away from the main computer in case of applications that need such a set up. USB extender is the choice for areas where remote monitoring and training conditions are needed. These are also used in cases where an extension of the keyboard and mouse are required especially in conference rooms or corporate environments. Commercial premises using printers and scanners too can avail this facility.