IEEE 1394 (FireWire)

A PCMCIA expansion card for laptops
that supplies two Firewire ports.

IEEE 1394, or, as Apple and other sane people refer to it, FireWire, refers to a type of port capable of very speedy transfer speeds. For this reason, FireWire is a popular interface for things such as external hard drives, digital cameras, and the iPod dock station (which also supports USB).

FireWire was originally born out of a need for a high-speed alternative to USB. At the time, USB 1.1 could only manage transfer speeds of a measly 12 Mbps (Mega-bits per second), while the newly-introduced FireWire standard could handle a monstrous 400 Mbps. However, with the release of USB 2.0, which supports transfer speeds up to 480 Mbps, FireWire is again seeing some competition. There is a newer standard called either FireWire 800 or 1394B that can support 800Mbps transfer rates.

Does my computer have a FireWire port?

The easiest way to check is to just look for something on your computer that resembles the above picture. FireWire ports are generally located on the rear of desktops and the sides/rear of laptops. If you're running Windows, you can also check by going to Start > My Network Places > View Network Connections (sidebar) Under "LAN or High Speed Internet" there should be an icon labeled "1394 Connection." If there isn't, your computer doesn't have a FireWire port.

Okay, what's the deal with the IEEE garbage?

It stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which is responsible for the the IEEE 1394 standard. Basically, they laid out certain specifications detailing how a port/device must behave before it can call itself an IEEE 1394 device. Their reasons for naming it a series of unpronouncable alpha-numeric garbage we will probably never know, although it probably has something to do with, you know, their being engineers.