Hello Chouse & Community,
The AnywhereUSB/14 seems like a great product, I bought two to test them out.
The Good:
- Dual power supplies, and they work.
- Dual network ports, which failover, that works too.
- Rack mountable.
- 14 ports,
- Good spacing between the ports.
- Web interface to setup the unit
- exportable configuration.
- Connectivity uses the same client as previous USB offerings, and multiple VM's can connect to a single AnywhereUSB/14.
The Bad, and it is potentially pretty bad if you want to connect more than one VM to the AnywhereUSB/14.
- Any client connected can reboot the entire AnywhereUSB/14.
- Any client connected can change the IP address of the AnywhereUSB/14
- The security context defined at the web interface is not releavant for a connected client.
I need everyone's help!
- To get this corrected, I contacted Digi. They're mostly driven by number of units sold, and i won't buy 100, but if we band together, that may send a stronger message.
- Contact this person at Digi to express your interest in AnywhereUSB/14.
- Stillman, Roxanne <roxanne.stillman-at-digi-dot-com>
I've suggested this set of requirements to Digi, let me know your thoughts:
Short Term/Must have:
1. Username/password challenge for any administrative login.
2. It must be possible to prevent a connected client computer from rebooting AnywhereUSB/14.
3. It must be possible to prevent the connected client from changing the configuration on the AnywhereUSB/14
4. Connecting from a client to the AnywhereUSB/14 involves an authentication challenge (user/password).
5. If the client is rebooted, it should allow for automatic reconnection to the AnywhereUSB/14 (cached/saved credential).
6. It must be possible to lock down individual USB ports to a specific client and prevent other clients from accessing these ports.
7. Each port should have a free form text field for administrative notes (what system or application uses this USB port, etc).
Long Term/Should have:
8. This username/challenge should allow authentication to an LDAP directory such as Active Directory, and should not be a local only design.
9. Client connection authentication challenges should use a directory as the authentication source (LDAP/Active Directory)
10. The AnywhereUSB/14 should not require an AD object or schema extension to perform authentication to Active Directory
11. The AnywhereUSB/14 administrator should be able to group one or more USB ports such that they are associated to one node or UserID from a permissions perspective.
12. Each group should support a free form text field for administrative notes (what system or application uses this USB port, etc). Once implemented this feature may replace #7 above.
Please think about contacting Digi with your thoughts.
Digi do seem to be making progress with their unit, and I spoke to them the other day and they have said they are making a 5 port version of the current 14 port multi-host device they have but it won't be out till later in the year.
