Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and communications protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices.
USB is not a true bus, meaning only the root hub sees the entire electrical communications. Or, there is no method to monitor upstream communications from a down stream device.
USB was designed to standardize the connection of computer peripherals, such as keyboards, pointing devices, digital cameras, printers, portable media players, disk drives and network adapters to personal computers, both to communicate and to supply electric power. It has become commonplace on other devices, such as smartphones, PDAs and video game consoles. USB has effectively replaced a variety of earlier interfaces, such as serial and parallel ports, as well as separate power chargers for portable devices.
As of 2008[update], approximately 6 billion USB ports and interfaces were in the global marketplace, and about 2 billion were being sold each year.