Silex Releases USB Server For Sharing USB Devices On LANs

Silex Technology America Inc. has unveiled a universal serial bus (USB) device server that will allow small business and home users to share USB 2.0 Hi-Speed devices such as scanners, printers and external hard drives over a local area network (LAN).

The SX-2000U2 is a one port, 10/100 Base-TX USB 2.0 device server that instantly converts USB 2.0 Hi-Speed devices into shared network resources. When connected, USB devices appear and function as locally connected devices to any system on the LAN. The SX-2000U2 provides IP filtering for enhanced security and is compatible with both Windows XP and Windows 2000. The unit includes the SX Virtual Link utility, which allows users to manage all of the networked USB devices on the LAN in a single window.

According to Silex's vice president of networking Keith Sugawara, the real benefit of the SX-2000U2 is that it allows users to take advantage of the USB 2.0 Hi-Speed features over the network. "Most of the USB devices in the marketplace today now have USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connectivity but it is still rare that you can take advantage of the USB Hi-Speed feature when networking such devices," he said in a statement. "We see a rapidly-increasing demand for reliable, cost-effective and easy-to-use networking solutions for USB devices involving scanning and storage. This is similar in scope to the way printers became a networked peripheral in the 1990s."

With new legislation, including Sarbanes-Oxley and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, requiring businesses to maintain electronic archives of their records and documents, Sugawara believes that the SX-2000U2 is a "timely" product. "The SX-2000U2 helps to build a flexible and affordable infrastructure for compliance; meantime it simply allows users to save time, money and other resources by sharing a scanner over the network," he continued.