ethernet based KVM

[MetalDwarf]

ok i dont even know if such a thing exists but i was thinking about putting my computer in a closet and using cable extensions to run my keyboard, mouse, monitor, sound etc to my desk. and i got to thinking that it would be really cool if i could put my computer in the dark cold basement where its alwasy cool and i wouldent have to work about noise at all. but i know you cant send USB or VGA that far and even if you could the cable cost is prohibative, BUT i already have a cat-5 line running that length.

so im wondering if such a thing exists as a box that i can plug my mouse keyboard, audio, usb and anything else i would ever want into have that sit on my desk with a cat5 cable coming out the other end and running to my computer stashed in the basement.

so

keyboard, mouse etc ---> KVM-ish box ---> ethernet cable to basement---> another box----break out to computer

anything like this exist?
i would image that keyboard, mouse, even audio would be doable over cat5 video and USB 2 might be a big of a step up though. does this exist? anyone?

 

[intercollector]

I'm almost positive that it doesn't exist, and it's unfortunate.

Your best option might be wireless, although this still doesnt solve the monitor problem.

I think that if we just wait long enough for bluetooth to really show become mainstream, we will be able to have a much different home computing environment.

 

[Spearboy]

lame but possible option is remote control of the computer. if you have some pos computer you could install remote administration on both machines, and the use the pos upstairs where temp on it doesnt matter, and have your nice computer downstairs. use eithernet or wireless to network them and the remote admin to operate them. wont work for games or anything really beyond internet, or as far as i tested remote administration it wouldn't handle it.

 

[MetalDwarf]

yeah i didnt think anything like this existed, im betting that with a gigabit ethernet connection it would be possible.
it might work better with a DVI monitor and video card due to the fact that its already digital and you dont need any horsepower to concert the analog of the VGA signal to digital then back to analog, sound wouldent be hard either (use SPDIF out) keyboard and mouse are low bandwidth, idealy i would want an external USB 2 drive enclosure to drop a cdrom into for input

wouldent it be nice to have your computer in a far off local where it can make as much noise as it wants and have nothing but your monitor keyboard mouse and a tiny little KVM (for lack of a better name) on your desk. all connected with a ethernet cable?

man if i find out this doesnt actually exist anywhere im so designing one, you laugh now but just watch one day i will rule the world......

 

[intercollector]

Originally posted by MetalDwarf
yeah i didnt think anything like this existed, im betting that with a gigabit ethernet connection it would be possible.
it might work better with a DVI monitor and video card due to the fact that its already digital and you dont need any horsepower to concert the analog of the VGA signal to digital then back to analog, sound wouldent be hard either (use SPDIF out) keyboard and mouse are low bandwidth, idealy i would want an external USB 2 drive enclosure to drop a cdrom into for input

wouldent it be nice to have your computer in a far off local where it can make as much noise as it wants and have nothing but your monitor keyboard mouse and a tiny little KVM (for lack of a better name) on your desk. all connected with a ethernet cable?

man if i find out this doesnt actually exist anywhere im so designing one, you laugh now but just watch one day i will rule the world......

They have some external cd drives that are firewire rather than USB. I'm not sure which format will be able to handle long wires though. Could be a cool test

 

[MetalDwarf]

remote control of the computer

yeah ive used norton remote desktop or something similar back in the day but the refresh time was pitiful and not at all what im looking for.

basically if i could run the wires as long as i wanted i would just do that but electrically thats not possible without a bunch of relays which just seems stupid

also with a fast enough internal network you could have say servers in teh basement of a building in a nice climate controlled room that is loud as hell

all your employes just have the little box on their desk running off virtual workstations on the above server

if you can make it cheap you could make a tonne of money, granted all that money they save on individual workstations would probably go right back into huge bills for the network capable of supporting that bandwidth

anyone know how much bandwidth a monitor uses doing 1600x1200 @85hz in MB/s ?
i imagine a lot

 

[Danjo]

Solutions like that exist, but are not cheap. What was use at work, made by BlackBox, is only a KVM. No USB, audio, etc.

Oh, and we're talking $1,000's range here.

 

[intercollector]

Originally posted by MetalDwarf
yeah ive used norton remote desktop or something similar back in the day but the refresh time was pitiful and not at all what im looking for.

basically if i could run the wires as long as i wanted i would just do that but electrically thats not possible without a bunch of relays which just seems stupid

also with a fast enough internal network you could have say servers in teh basement of a building in a nice climate controlled room that is loud as hell

all your employes just have the little box on their desk running off virtual workstations on the above server

if you can make it cheap you could make a tonne of money, granted all that money they save on individual workstations would probably go right back into huge bills for the network capable of supporting that bandwidth

anyone know how much bandwidth a monitor uses doing 1600x1200 @85hz in MB/s ?
i imagine a lot

Supposively, this is possible with bluetooth. From some of the projects that I've seen, they've had systems where you'd have 1 console (keyboard, monitor, mouse) controlling many servers, or many consoles working on 1 server, and it all being done in a wireless environment.

But it is a long ways off.

 

[MetalDwarf]

hmm intresting.

other thought i just had (though a stupid one)

just buy appropriate connectors and a buttload of coaxial cable

splice off each wire you want sent into its own coax cable and run it as far as you can (coax goes really far!) downside is you get a huge bundle of ugly coax cable and scary cable connections

would probably work though......poorly

 

[luismm]

Yup, ethernet based KVM boxes do exist, you can run your keyboard, mouse and vga through it, not sure on the audio but you can run a separate audio cable if it's the only thing missing... as Danjo pointed it's not given and you really want to pick a good solution for less capables one degrade the video signal quite a bit

 

[Spearboy]

opps i knew i forgot this for a reason. i hate working with these things. thin clients (might be a differnet name, but thats what i was told they were). had them at my school. they run off ethernet and connect to a server where cd-rom, hard-drive, processor etc are. well maybe they had processors in, but im not sure, they were still laggy to use when we had them around 4 years ago. basically u connect to server via ethernet cable, small box has usb for keyboard/mouse, monitor, i think they had sound. basically everything was run off the server and these extended the physicall aspects of the computer to end users. very smart design, cost about 1k a box i think so would have been a little better to just but some custom made top of the line machines and network them like any other normal person. stupid rich school with even stupider administraton

 

[MetalDwarf]

those are probably just workstations, probably a very small hard drive to boot from or direct boot from LAN, basically its a CPU and ram in a box all teh data, OS, everything is based off a central server somwhere

many offices and schools use this aproach becuase u can use a slow cheap machine to boot from a central computer but these boxes are still computers
my old highschool did this we had 30 NT machines with celeron 300A (yes i did overclock my workstation ) they had a 1GB hard drive and like 64mb of ram everything else was off the server


basically i dont even want a box to do any thinking i just want it do act as a demultiplexer (many lines in one out) and then the same thing backwards at the other end

i work for a small company which is designing scientific dataloggers based around the intel x-scale 400mhz arm CPU i bet i could adapt it to do this task. dunno if its worth the R&D and all that would be entailed in building it but those boards only cost 300 bucks CANADIAN rather then 1000, assuming i could pipe the video through decently it might be worth playing with, honestly i dont know nearly enough about it to make it work at this stage but it might be fun to try.... now if i only had the time... i know ill do it when im dead i will have lots of time then.......

 

[Guarana [BAWLS]]

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=50319269&pfp=SEARCH

hehe

 

[thorban]

Consider that a resolution of 1024x768/60Hz at 24bpp requires bandwidth of ~141 MB/s while ethernet is only theoretically capable of moving 12.5 MB/s.

I don't know how that KVM from CompUSA would work, but I imagine lossy compression would have to be involved, or extremely slow refresh rates.

 

[MTB2Live Live4Comps]

have a look at synergy on sourceforge.net - it mighjt be what yhou're looking for. it's all software based, and therefore works over ethernet. it's designed for multiple monitors, but it probablhy will do what hyou need too. read up a bit on it, verhy cool software
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screen savers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all.

 

[mosin]

Originally posted by Danjo
Solutions like that exist, but are not cheap. What was use at work, made by BlackBox, is only a KVM. No USB, audio, etc.

Oh, and we're talking $1,000's range here.

True. I saw a high end one awhile back. It cost seven thousand dollars. It gave the network administrator complete control over each of the several hundred individual workstations that he was responsible for. It was so neat you wouldn't believe it, unless you saw it in action. It puts any other solution, like remote admin, to shame.