Method and system for using a universal serial bus (USB) as a peer-to-peer network

摘要

In one embodiment, the system includes a host processor and a plurality of devices connected to the host processor via a USB interface. Each of the devices includes at least a processor and USB controller hardware. The host processor includes message handling logic and each of the devices also include message handling logic that is configured to cooperate with the device to prepend a communication protocol header to a message that one of the devices desires to send to the host or to another of the devices. The host processor and each of the devices are peers with respect to each other. A router located in the host processor analyzes the communication protocol header to determine whether the message is destined for the host processor or for one of the other devices.