[Idea] Hardware broadcast by active hub.

[Rapture]

Bah, missed your post while typing my novel.

One arguement to your statement would be Logitech wireless mice and just buying multiple recievers for $10/each. Does the mouse handshake with each reciever or just one? Ah, maybe each reciever does the handshaking to act as a mouse... Which do you think is the case?

[Rapture]

Actually, after thinking about how layer 5 works and the simplicity of mice. I believe this would work since I'm sure the mouse doesn't remember which peer it is connected to. I think Windows just associates a usb port (1-126) to that mouse. It would be interesting to attempt.

Edit: I meant IRQ instead of USB port.

[Rapture]

I would assume the RF mice are using FSSM (Frequency Spread Spectrum) which will attempt to sync with receiver A with is hopping from frequency to frequency (similar to cordless phones) to prevent interference from similar devices. That would explain the out-of-sync issue. Bluetooth uses something similar but also does a handshake off of a MAC address which syncs device A with only receiver A.

I read up on some RFCs and Windows USB whitepapers and I believe my idea is going to work given everything is using the same resolution. Hell, I wrote some software a couple years ago in AutoIt that will allow mouse movement within a smaller window on machine A to match the movements on a larger resolution on the same window on machine B. I would use this in conjunction with a software solution like keyclone. I want to avoid that though since my network is pretty active (3 file servers, 4 clients, firewall, Cisco router, and a couple other project machines).

A tip for those who do use Keyclone (or similar) on a home network, you can setup Quality of Service (QoS) for the port/protocol the software is using to ensure traffic hits all your machine before any other traffic flows. It's like a priority list saying this traffic can take the right of way over this other traffic. They do it with Vonage/Skype hardware to ensure clear calls.

Anyways, I'm gonna start a project log here soon but I need to draw up the wiring schematics in Visio first.