Many times, under Linux, you have a device that uses a USB port and not the network. Yet, if you want multiple users to have access to said device, you need to somehow share it.

One solution is to have a driver which allows for network connections from remote systems. However, the likelihood of such is close to 0.

Another solution under Linux is to have the USB/IP (read USB over IP) modules setup and share any USB device from any computer to any other computer.

The reason why I looked for this is the limited number of USB port I have on my new server. I did not realize that I'd need 9 ports to support all my devices. I can save one by having a single USB offer two PS/2 connectors: yes, I have an old keyboard and an old mouse... So? What's your point?

The computer with the devices becomes a USB/IP server. Then the other computer(s) become clients.

I have a Raspberry Pi 3B which is just laying around so I was thinking I could use that one device to extend my 4 ports into 8 ports total. Not only that, I could then share my devices with other computers. Kind of cool. Since I like to use firewalls, I'll be safe anyway, but just the idea I find very exciting. I'll keep the import devices on my main server and the rest will go on the Raspberry Pi.

I'll wrote more about it once I've done it. For now, you can refer to the following pages:

http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2018/208/Tutorial-USB-IP

https://derushadigital.com/other%20projects/2019/02/19/RPi-USBIP-ZWave.html