Treat USB As An Ethernet Network
The Linux kernel for the iPAQ uses this communications strategy exclusively, since the iPAQ hardware has neither an accessible legacy (RS-232/RS-422) serial port nor a dedicated network interface.
The USB-eth module in Linux emulates an Ethernet device that uses USB as the physical medium. Once created, this network interface can be assigned an IP address and otherwise treated as though it were ordinary Ethernet hardware. The USB-eth module allows the USB device to "see" a network, ping other IP addresses, and even "talk" DHCP, HTTP, NFS, telnet, and e-mail. In short, any applications that work over real Ethernet interfaces will work over a USB-eth interface without modification, because they can't tell that they aren't using real Ethernet hardware.
On Linux hosts, the corresponding Ethernet-over-USB kernel module is called usbnet. A recently-announced usbnet-style driver for Win32 hosts is called the Bahia Network Driver.
Read more about this topic: Ethernet Over USB
Famous quotes containing the words treat and/or network:
“People are too apt to treat God as if he were a minor royalty.”
—Herbert Beerbohm, Sir Tree (1853–1917)
“How have I been able to live so long outside Nature without identifying myself with it? Everything lives, moves, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays, emanating either from myself or from others, cross the limitless chain of created things unimpeded; it is a transparent network that covers the world, and its slender threads communicate themselves by degrees to the planets and stars. Captive now upon earth, I commune with the chorus of the stars who share in my joys and sorrows.”
—Gérard De Nerval (1808–1855)