Daisy chaining and scalability
Connect more USB hubs to your infrastructure to increase productivity to sync, charge and transfer data to more mobile devices.
Want to store and charge more shared devices? This is the place to learn about why scalability is crucial in transferring data.
More devices connected
Our USB hubs enable you to scale, by connecting large numbers of devices while delivering high speed data transfer and syncing and charge.
If you want to connect and sync more than 15 mobile devices, multiple USB hubs can be connected together with (either in a star topology or daisy-chained) to allow more devices to be managed from a single host computer simultaneously.
This enables you to sync (data transfer) information to multiple end devices using multiple USB hubs, all controlled from one single host computer.
Each of our hubs uses a number of the available USB devices and as a result impacts on the number of connected devices available. A single USB Host Controller can allow up to 127 (27 – 1 Host Controller) connected devices. This a USB specification imposed and refers to the 7 bit addressing used with USB. The total number of USB endpoints allowed is dependent on the USB Host Controller and its firmware, however, this number is typically 96 USB endpoints.
Read more about the endpoint limitation in our article here.
Hub Depth
USB specifications mean you can scale to a hub depth of 5. You can scale up to a high number of devices with our hubs, it depends a little on what you are trying to achieve. If you need sync/data transfer, then you will be limited to the endpoint limitation and hub-depth restrictions on the hubs. The Route String is a 20-bit field in downstream directed packet that the hub uses to route the packet to the designated downstream port.
It is composed of a concatenation of the downstream port numbers (4 bits per hub) for each hub traversed to reach a device. The hub uses a Hub Depth value multiplied by four as an offset into the Route String to locate the bits it uses to determine the downstream port number. The Hub Depth value is determined and assigned to every hub during the enumeration process.
Connecting to the host via USB 2 or USB 3 means you will have a 5-hub depth limit, meaning you can sync up to 85 devices with our hubs. Our Thunderbolt 3 connection hubs effectively removes that limit – meaning you can sync up to 96 devices.
Your scalability options
Option 1
Star topology
Each managed USB hub needs to be connected to mains power individually and the first hub in the chain should be connected to the local computer through the hub’s host port.
Four additional hub can be attached to the downstream USB ports of the first hub by their host ports as shown in the graphic across.
This star topology allows you to connect up to 85 devices for charging and syncing from a single computer.
Alternatively, a simpler daisy-chain arrangement can be used for connecting two hubs, allowing 29 devices to be managed from a single host computer.
Option 2
Thunderbolt USB hubs
Using a Thunderbolt host connected USB hub means you can daisy chain up to six ThunderSync3-16s to a single host computer.
This allows data to be transferred at 5Gbps to over 96 mobile devices.
ThunderSync and desktop products
Another option is to connect a ThunderSync2-16 to four desktop products to achieve charge and syncing of up to 72 devices, as shown in the diagram example.
