The Firewire Interface, or sometimes simply firewire, is a way of connecting external devices to personal computers (PC). It is similar to USB (Universal Serial Bus) but tranfers data at a higher rate.

The firewire interface is also known as IEEE 1394, its implementing standard. IEEE (eye-triple-e) stands for Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the largest professional organiization in the world.

It was Apple Computer, Inc. who initiated the IEEE 1394 standard in 1986 with its FireWire High Speed Serial Bus. Sony calls its IEEE 1394 implementation as i.Link while Texas Instruments refers to it as Lynx.

One of the advantages of the firewire interface is it high data transfer rate of up to 50 MB/s (400 Mbps), which is about 30 times faster than USB.

Firewire cables are very easy to connect and are hot-pluggable. There's no need to turn off the device to connect or disconnect and you don't need to reboot your PC.

Firewire is a plug-and-play bus that supports up to 63 devices (16 - daisy chained) with cable lengths up to about 4.5 m (14 feet).

Firewire 400

S100 - 100 Mbits/s, 12 MB/S

S200 - 200 Mbits/s, 24 MB/s

S400 - 400 Mbits/s, 48 MB/s

Cable length is limited to 4.5 metres (14.8 ft) and uses a 6-wire connector (alpha connector).

The 4-circuit connector is fully data-compatible with 6-circuit alpha interfaces but lacks power connectors.

http://www.usbyte.com/common/Firewire_Interface.htm

http://www.firewire-1394.com/what_is_firewire.htm