Hi I'm Ryan

Hi I'm Ryan

- For my day to day I work as a Software Engineer at a Consultancy called Bluetel 👨‍💻

- I help run codebar Birmingham

- I love to play about all sorts of different tech related odds and ends in my own time

I am here today to give a talk about...

Things you might find in your attic? 🤔

Video

Keyboard

Mouse

Video

Keyboard

Mouse

V

K

M

What is a "KVM" in this context?

Story time!

The commute

My daily Interactions with computers looked a bit like this

Home Setup

Work Setup

The commute

But stuff happened...

Home Setup

Work Setup

The Company Mandated Secure VPN'd Vetted Laptop™

Home Setup

The Company Mandated Secure VPN'd Vetted Laptop™

• Tiny screen
• Cramped keyboard
• Nowhere to put it
• Fun fun fun for 8 hours a day 🎉

Home Setup

The Company Mandated Secure VPN'd Vetted Laptop™

• Good screen real estate
• Good seating position
• Happy with peripherals
• Happy with monitors
• Has cool RGB (What more could you want)

• Tiny screen
• Cramped keyboard
• Nowhere to put it
• Fun fun fun for 8 hours a day 🎉

Home Setup

The Company Mandated Secure VPN'd Vetted Laptop™

• Good screen real estate
• Good seating position
• Happy with peripherals
• Happy with monitors
• Has cool RGB (What more could you want)

• Tiny screen
• Cramped keyboard
• Nowhere to put it
• Fun fun fun for 8 hours a day 🎉

What to do?

What to do?

Pain Points

• USB switch was awkward to get to / It was hard to tell which computer things were connected to
• Using the built in menus on the monitors to swap between inputs was an absolute nightmare.
• Sometimes monitors would just randomly decide to disconnect swapping between computers (Leading to needing to randomly plugging things in and out before they would work) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

KVM Switch To the rescue!

Interesting things I learnt from doing this

'E DID' What?

• EDID Standing for "Extended Display Identification Data" it is the way display peripherals can communicate with anything that can output over most modern graphics communications standards (HDMI, Display Port ect.)
• Some KVM Switches can emulate this signal and pretend that the monitor is always plugged in making swapping significantly less "Flickery"

Usb Hub limiations

• Apparently there is a hard limitation of chaining 5 USB hubs before devices begin running into connectivity issues
• Some dongles can count as 2 chained USB hubs by themselves, In tandem with KVM switch counting as a hub you can run into limits quickly depending on what devices you are running. 😢
• Active USB Repeaters also count as USB hubs. (So you can run into limits faster than you would expect)

That Sounds good!

But what if I want to use KVM Long distance?

Remote Access

Remote Access

😱

How to get around this?

Story time! (Again)

Enter IP KVMs

Enter IP KVMs

😢

😢

Reboot Plz 🙏

✅

😌

How to connect to IP KVMs

 Internet Protocol

• A protocol used as a basis for communication over the internet (Allows for computers to talk to each other)
• On the internet each computer is allocated an "IP Address" and allows computers to talk to identify each other
  (Looks a bit like 128.231.5.12)
• You normally have a public IP address
  (Which is the one given to your router by your internet provider) and a private IP address (Which is used to identify your computer to other computers connected to your router)

 Mail System

Apartment Block 1

Apartment Block 2

35 Coventry St

36 Coventry St

Mail

Mail Depot

 Internet Protcol

Public IP
(123.123.123.123)

Public IP
(123.123.123.124)

Internet Traffic

Local Area Network

Local Area Network

Wide
Area Network
(The internet)

 Internet Protcol

Phone

Xbox

Smart toaster

IP KVM

 Internet Protcol

Public IP
(123.123.123.123)

Public IP
(123.123.123.124)

Internet Traffic

Local Area Network

Local Area Network

Wide
Area Network
(The internet)

Port forwarding with
static IP Adress

Using a VPN
(Like TailScale)

Live Demo

( What could go wrong :) )

Questions?

Credits:

• Wikimedia (CC Various Versions)
• Minigrammer's Diagram Library
• MS Paint