There are no terminators required, or manual IDs to be set. As 1394 evolves, new cable designs will allow longer distances without repeaters and with more bandwidth. Consider the following layout of two separate work areas connected with a 1394 bridge. Up to sixteen hops may be made between any two devices on a 1394 bus. A 1394 splitter is used between the bridge and the printer to provide another port to attach a 1394 bus bridge.
Splitters provide more topology flexibility for users.
The 1394 bus bridge isolates data traffic within each work area. IEEE 1394 bus bridges allow selected data to be passed from one bus segment to another. Each IEEE 1394 bus segment may have up to 63 devices attached to it. Improvements to the current cabling are being specified to allow longer distance cables. Over 1000 bus segments may be connected by bridges thus providing a large growth potential.