How many devices do you own – a couple or, maybe, more? How often do you have to operate all of them at a time? Rather often, we suppose. Add a laptop or desktop to your workflow; now think of how you can make it more efficient. What is it that requires more effort than necessary when you have to switch between devices? That’s right – use a single keyboard and mouse to save yourself time and effort. All you need is access to the USB port of a remote machine to which these peripherals are connected.
Remote access to USB ports is also required when you work on a ‘thin client’ and virtual environment. A ‘thin client’ does not have a hard drive, so it depends on servers to host applications, process data and perform other computational functions. Virtual environment typically does not allow interacting with USB ports of the host machine, so the keyboard and mouse remain unreachable to you.
To share a USB port among multiple computers over network you need a special app – USB Network Gate by Eltima Software.
USB Network Gate
The app is compact and easy-to-use, and here is your step-by-step guide to using it:
- Download and install the USB Network Gate on the computer that has the keyboard and mouse to be shared (server) and the computer that needs access to it (client).
- Launch the app on the server and go to ‘Share local USB devices’ tab. Locate the keyboard and mouse and click ‘Share’ button.
- Open the app on the client, go to ‘Remote USB devices’ tab and click ‘Connect’ next to it.
That’s it – now you can use the remote keyboard and mouse as if they were connected directly to your machine.
