Customer Reviews

USB Repeater Cable

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Unlike an "USB hub" which needs to be recognized/configured by the OS, this acts as a transparent repeater, that is, it boosts electrical signals on the USB cable, without showing up as a device in the USB bus.

While you might think that boosting signals in an usb bus is trivial, it is not. There's a chip inside this tiny box that does all the work, and takes power from the same USB bus (no power supply needed).

The packaging says that you can "chain up to five of these units for a total cable length of 80 feet". However that might not be even required. I was able to chain ONE usb repeater cable in the MIDDLE of two regular 9-feet (A-A) usb extension cables, and my webcam worked flawlessly, for a total length of 34ft. Without the active USB repeater in the middle, the device wouldn't even be recognized by the PC due to the loss of usb signal at that total cable length.

Like I said, very capable device at an affordable price, and totally transparent to the software side (no drivers to install, no "recognition" needed by the OS, you just plug it and works).

Since the packaging only explicitely states that it works with Windows systems, I was worried since I needed to use it for a MAC, running, OS 9.1. I use the extender cable to make a 32' total cable length to connect my iMac to an HP PSC950xi office-jet print/scan/fax. To my relief, it all works, although printing does take quite a long time (a couple minutes for a typical page). This is probably due to the length of the total cable. All things considered, though, it works quite well.

Mac compatible, great! Is this capable of 2.0 speeds-480mbps or just 1.1 speeds?