By Joe Farace

In 1995 FireWire (officially called IEEE 1394) was adopted as an industry standard and is a high-speed, hot-swappable peripheral interface that supports data transfer rates of up to 400 Mbit/sec.

FireWire 800, aka IEEE 1394b, is the next generation of FireWire technology and not only doubles the throughput of the original FireWire interface to 800 Mbit/sec but also increases the maximum distance (15 feet) of FireWire connections. If your computer in not already so equipped, FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) interfaces can be added to a desktop computer using a FireWire 800 PCI card or in the case of a laptop computer with a FireWire 800 CardBus card from companies such as Belkin.