Connect Ultra-6 to Router via USB?

PeteCress wrote:
My Ultra-6 has two USB ports. My LinkSys E3000 router has a USB port.

In a USB system, there is one "host" and multiple "devices", arranged in a star topology with the host at the center and each device connected to it. The host is almost always a PC, and the devices are things like keyboards and mice, USB hard drives and flash drives, music players, etc. Devices can't talk directly to each other; they only communicate with the host. Hosts don't talk to each other because by definition there is only one host per USB system.

Your Ultra 6 is a USB host. So is your E3000. Therefore, they cannot talk to each other.

PeteCress wrote:
LinkSys goes on about E3000's "Media Server" and I vaguely recall something about a media server for the Ultra-6.

Yes, both products can be configured to read media files from a USB Mass Storage device (a hard drive or flash drive) and stream them to a DLNA client.

PeteCress wrote:
Seems like a USB connection would be faster than my Cat-5e Ethernet.

How do you figure? High-Speed USB (480Mbps) at its theoretical best can transfer 53 megabytes per second. Your E3000 is limited by its hardware to USB speeds much slower than that, but even if it weren't, transfers to and from your Ultra 6 over gigabit Ethernet should still be significantly (50-100%) faster.

PeteCress wrote:
Could the Ultra-6 be connected directly to the router via a male-male USB cord?

No. You won't start a fire if you try, but you also won't accomplish anything useful.