USB 3.0 Support as of 2018?

Submitted by victorhooi@yahoo.com on #1

Hi,

Does VirtualHere support USB 3.0 currently?

(I saw this old post from 2014 which mentioned it doesn't - https://www.virtualhere.com/node/411 - but not sure if things have changed since then).

We'd be running VirtualHere on a Raspberry Pi 3, and accessing it from Windows clients.

Thanks,
Victor

Submitted by Michael on Sun, 2018/09/02 - 13:02

#2

Yes,

Server = Linux
Client = Windows 10, or a recent linux

Those combinations only at the moment

Submitted by LeoP on Fri, 2018/10/26 - 03:54

#3

Hi Michael,

I have evaluated the product and am quite impressed. My use case would be USB 3.0 Storage devices over 10G Ethernet to Macs (Digital Video Editing workflow), but I am not quite sure what to expect. The Server would be a quite powerfull modern Linux box, the clients must be Macs (and I can't pretest a lot - taking down an editing room costs $$$/hour). What should I expect if a VirtualHere-10G-Ethernet connection to a USB 3.0 Disk (as those which come out of news cameras) is used? The ping latency is well below 1ms.

Thank you for a great product and a trial license, that allowed me to test everything from a matchbox-sized OpenWRT router up to a 2-Socket Xeon box!

All the best from Europe - Leo.

Submitted by Michael on Fri, 2018/10/26 - 10:11

#4

It would be quite slow because VirtualHere on OSX only supports USB 2.0 speeds. I wouldnt recommend it. I would recommend you use a higher level sharing protocol like cifs and use a NAS instead.

Submitted by LeoP on Mon, 2018/11/12 - 19:28

#5

Michael, is the missing USB 3 support in an open-source part of the XNU kernel or in your proprietary code?

If it were the former, i would volunteer to take a look at it, if you point me to where you would need the changes.

All the best, Leo

Submitted by Michael on Mon, 2018/11/12 - 19:35

#6

It is inside Apples closed source IOKit driver implemenation.

Specifically it is this class https://developer.apple.com/documentation/kernel/iousbcontrollerv2 that is no longer fully implemented in the kernel anymore.

Apple has rewritten their USB stack in 10.11 to use a driver called AppleUSBXHCI but this undocumented and not available to 3rd parties