Hub Info
Hubs are cable extenders that conform to the IEEE 1394 standard. Each hub can have 2, 3, 4, 6 or more ports, and each port can send and receive data at 100/200/400Mbps.

1394 Features

  • high speed - speeds of 100, 200 and 400 megabits per second (Mbps) are currently supported
  • Isochronous support - deterministic bandwidth allocation guarantees bandwidth for time-sensitive applications, such as real-time video feeds, that could otherwise be disrupted buy heavy traffic use
  • flexible topology - devices can be daisy chained and no central bus supervision is required
  • hot-plug support - the bus dynamically reconfigures whenever new nodes are added, which means users do not have to configure mode IDs or unique termination schemes
  • cable power - low cost peripherals can be powered directly from the 1394 cable, so no dedicated power supply is required (check each devices for it's power requirements)
  • open IEEE standard - IEEE adoption has increased industry acceptance of the standard
  • optimum performance - each hop can be up to 4.5 meters long, which yields a total cable distance of 72 me
FireWire/1394 interfaces have already been incorporated into a variety of devices, including PC cameras, DV camcorders, DV recorders, digital still cameras, high-speed HDDs, CD-ROM and CDRW drives, DVD-ROM drives, DVD-RAM drives, digital TVs, set-top boxes, scanners, and printers.
The maximum distance between any two leaf nodes on a FireWire/1394 network, which can have no more than 16 cables, 72 meters. (If leaf nodes are connected using 4.5 meter cables.
The repeater is a standalone device that both extends the distance covered by a FireWire/1394 serial bus and provides ports for the connection of appropriate end devices. The repeater comes with independent ports able to to transfer data at up to 400Mbps. Devices daisy chained to a FireWire/1394 serial bus can be separated by no more than 4.5 meters. The repeater allows users to overcome this limitation by providing an extra link. This means end devices can be more than 4.5 meters apart, though all connected end devices must be no more than 4.5 meters from the repeater.