This article will give a simple solution to an issue concerning how to share a USB device at Terminal Server.
Many people nowadays work from home on a fairly regular basis. Let's take the most tickling issue. For example, a person's job relies on his/her being able to connect via VPN into the Company intranet. The person runs a lot of software on a work computer that is bandwidth intensive, and being that his/her uplink speed from home is rather limited, there comes rather difficult time running normal applications from home. For this reason the person runs applications on his/her work computer (which is at the office) while being at home via VPN and Remote Desktop. The problem the person has with this is not being able to connect his/her USB devices to a work PC. For example, he/she uses Siber Systems Roboform2Go to keep track of all of passwords. Since the company can fully access a person's work PC, he/she doesn't really want to store all personal passwords there. And also no wish to purchase two separate licenses for Roboform, so instead it was decided to use the portable version that installs and runs from a USB memory stick. The issue now is that the memory stick is always with the person, and when he/she is working from home all usernames and passwords are to be manually typed in the remote session - That defeats the purpose of using the portable version of Roboform! Another problem to solve: a person has several remote employees that live in various places around the country. They use their company's internal IM client to communicate, and also use company provided web cams - It's much easier dealing with remote employees when you can actually see them while conversing over IM. Since his/her IM client is on his/her work machine, there is no possibility to use the web cam he/she has at home to video chat with remote employees. A person also has a Blackberry 8830 that is to be occasionally plugged into his/her work PC (via USB) in order for it to access his/her email account on the company's Exchange server. If he/she is at home this is simply impossible via VPN and Remote Desktop. The solution is really simple and doesn't require any efforts. It's called USB over IP. This program allows to share any USB device at Terminal Server. How it works: the program consists of a Server and a Workstation. You should install the Workstation on the computer to which the USB device is physically connected. Server side should be installed on the remote server from which you need to access your devices. USB over IP supports a wide range of USB devices. The program does not require any special knowledge and installs easily right out of the box.
