If you come across a situation where there’s a need to extend a USB cable over 25, 50, 100 feet or even longer distances there are a few solutions available on the market to choose from today. It’s all about inherent maximum cable length limitations of the cable type as well as the quality of the cable solution we select.

Before we get into USB extension options you need to understand the underlying UBS cable length limits.

• Maximum length of a cable between USB 2.0 devices is 5 meters or about 16 feet.
• Maximum recommended length of USB 3.x cable is 3 meters or about 9 feet.

With USB active cables aka repeaters the max length limit depends on whether a regular USB cable with an active cable or not. For the active cables the maximum active cable length for USB 2.0 is 98 feet and the maximum recommended length for USB 3.x is 59 feet. If you are using a regular with an active cable, then the maximum length for USB 2.0 is about 82 feet and the maximum recommended length for USB 3.x is about 49 feet.

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