A home gateway represents a centralized intelligent interface and may receive communication signals from different external networks and transmit the signals to a certain intelligent device through a home network; therefore, the home gateway is a connecting bridge and portal between the home internal network and the external networks. As for a common home gateway, the interface type of the user side includes an ordinary Ethernet interface, an ordinary phone interface, a wireless local area network (LAN) interface and an infrared data interface. As for an enhanced home gateway having a USB host interface, the function of the home network is extended by attaching USB devices such as a USB flash drive, a USB camera or a USB printer, thereby largely improving the status of the home gateway as the core device of the home network.
However, once the USB device is attached to the home gateway, the USB device becomes an exclusive device of the home gateway. A terminal such as a personal computer (PC) can not directly access the USB device attached to the home gateway, unless the home gateway has specific sharing and access software or other functional software. For example, after the USB flash drive is connected to the home gateway, the PC can access the USB flash drive through a File Transport Protocol (FTP) only if the home gateway can be supported as a FTP Server; or the PC can access the USB flash drive through a Server Message Block (SMB) protocol if the home gateway supports a Samba function. The foregoing methods are based on a client/server (C/S) access mode, and the PC or other terminals can not transparently access the USB device attached to the home gateway. For another example, after a High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) data card is connected to the gateway, the HSPA data card may usually be used to access the Internet and implement a Circuits Switch (CS) domain voice function. However, since the gateway does not provide any user interface, the HSPA data card needs to be connected to the PC, in order to realize a messaging function through background software in the PC.
That is to say, according to the access mode of the conventional art, although many types of USB devices have abundant application software on the PC platform, the USB device becomes an exclusive device of the home gateway once the USB device is attached to the home gateway, and the application software can not be used directly to access the USB device attached to the home gateway transparently.