Hi,
I’d like to have my Mac on the main floor, and move the Hard Drives and other peripherals to another out-of-the-way room.
Do I have to run the CAT cables through a router I can I simply plug one adapter into the MAC, the other adapter into a powered USB hub in the remote room, and run a line of CAT 6 between the two?
Thanks for posting. Sorry, I missed USB in the title.
There are products for going from USB to Cat6 back to USB, to connect USB devices over long distances, but unfortunately so far the inexpensive ones don’t work well - and the ones that work well are expensive.
What will work well and is inexpensive, is simple USB cables and hubs – people are often not aware what’s possible.
If the other room is up to 30 meters away, we’d recommend buying up to three 10 meter active USB extension cables (like our $11.95 http://plugable.com/products/usb2-10m/) and a single powered USB hub for the far room (like our $21.95 http://plugable.com/products/usb2-hub…).
USB 2.0 supports up to 5 deep on hubs and devices, so as long as you don’t go any deeper, you can support 3 active extension cables (10 meters each) + powered hub + devices off of that, without problems. If you have any devices which themselves have a hub in them, you may have to back off to 20 meters (2 cables).
Getting further out than that gets us out of standard USB 2.0 solutions. Is that the distance you’re looking for?
Thanks for asking ahead!
Bernie