USB is standardised. File structures are also standardized (if you ignore different storage formats like ntfs, FAT32, etc). Everything that USB drives have to deal with is solved and standardized.
Meanwhile, network specs are continually changing due to security concerns. If you have 2 devices connected, you need to have a secure way for those 2 devices to verify that they’re the correct devices. That’s not as big of a concern for USB drives, because if a bad actor has physical access to a computer you generally have bigger problems to deal with.
Plus, hardware vendors like murkying the waters by pushing for their internal implementations when possible, preventing standardization across the entire industry
I absolutely see the security side of it, but I would assume that could be solved quite easily by having some kind of “on/off” switch combined with only allowing manually verified connections.
I mean, we basically have this for bluetooth, where I can connect to pretty much any bluetooth device, and just confirm or deny the connection request. It surprises me that some similar protocol hasn’t been invented for wifi, where I could see other machines on the network (like you can see nearby bluetooth devices), and send a connection request that the owner of that device can accept or deny. Any machine connected to the internet is already “wide open” in the sense that it’s constantly receiving loads of wireless data from all across the globe. We’ve been able to standardise that in a “safe enough” way, I don’t see how doing the same thing over a local network could be any more difficult.
I think the main reason is priorities.
USB is standardised. File structures are also standardized (if you ignore different storage formats like ntfs, FAT32, etc). Everything that USB drives have to deal with is solved and standardized.
Meanwhile, network specs are continually changing due to security concerns. If you have 2 devices connected, you need to have a secure way for those 2 devices to verify that they’re the correct devices. That’s not as big of a concern for USB drives, because if a bad actor has physical access to a computer you generally have bigger problems to deal with.
Plus, hardware vendors like murkying the waters by pushing for their internal implementations when possible, preventing standardization across the entire industry
I absolutely see the security side of it, but I would assume that could be solved quite easily by having some kind of “on/off” switch combined with only allowing manually verified connections.
I mean, we basically have this for bluetooth, where I can connect to pretty much any bluetooth device, and just confirm or deny the connection request. It surprises me that some similar protocol hasn’t been invented for wifi, where I could see other machines on the network (like you can see nearby bluetooth devices), and send a connection request that the owner of that device can accept or deny. Any machine connected to the internet is already “wide open” in the sense that it’s constantly receiving loads of wireless data from all across the globe. We’ve been able to standardise that in a “safe enough” way, I don’t see how doing the same thing over a local network could be any more difficult.