How to tell which USB ports are on which controllers...

1

What would you recommend as a free utility or steps to take to view the USB controllers on my Windows 2012 Multipoint Server so that I can determine if the 10 clients through 2 plugable hubs and 2 connections to 2 USB ports on the server are optimal? In other words, out of the 8 USB ports on the server (mix of 2.0 and 3.0), I need to know which ones are on separate controllers (?) and therefore which ones to use so that I can best balance the load (like 5 clients on one USB controller and 5 on another). Thanks!

2

Hi James,

Thanks for posting your question here about determining the which devices are connected to which host controllers, I’ll be happy to help.

The easiest way to do this on Window is to start Device Manager and choose View --> Devices by connection.

Then under the PCI bus section you’ll see entries for each USB host controller. Connect a unique usb device like a flash drive to one of the ports and you’ll be able to find which host controller it enumerates on.

I hope this helps!

Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.

Jerome

Plugable Technologies

3

Here’s a picture of what you’ll see in Device Manager. You can see the other USB host controller under the red circle. If you connect a device to a port that is on the other controller it will show up there. I hope this helps!

!](https://d37wxxhohlp07s.cloudfront.net/s3_images/891744/USB%20Controller%20in%20Device%20Manager_inline.jpg?1366836863)](https://d37wxxhohlp07s.cloudfront.net/s3_images/891744/USB%20Controller%20in%20Device%20Manager.jpg?1366836863)

4

I recently built a computer lab with 10 Plugable DC-125 USB 2.0 devices and Windows Multipoint Server 2012. I have two 8-port? plugable USB hubs splitting the load with two feeds to two of the 8 or so USB ports on the 8 core 8gb server.

Here’s my problem: When the 10 clients are in use, my login to the server itself (as the teacher) slows to a crawl and becomes unresponsive. Then one or two of the clients usually gets dropped or freezes. I managed to pull up task manager and watch the processes using CPU resources. On average between 4-6 of them using 40-60% of the resources (across 8 cores).

My thoughts are that I need some way of load balancing or limiting the amount of CPU resources each user can have access to. What would you suggest? So far you guys have been awesome! Thanks so much!

5

Hi James-

Jerome is out of the office on company business, and I replied to the same question in a private ticket- please let me know if you have any questions or didn’t receive that mail.

Best wishes-

Jeff Everett
Plugable Support