This article was created from a community discussion by Matt_S.
The USB ports on a KVM switch act like a USB hub. Therefore, KVM switches require both a video cable and a USB cable to connect to each computer to allow both the video and the USB ports to function properly. In most cases, a USB-A to USB-B cable, such as StarTech.com's USB2AA2M can be used for the data connection, though some KVM switches only have a VGA port on the KVM side may require a proprietary KVM cable such as the SVECONUS6.