USB 2.0 cables are normally limited to 5 metres in length, beyond this they start to become unreliable and don’t support the full 480Mbps bandwidth. The new active boosted cables allow longer distances by adding some fancy electronics in a small block which sits either in the middle of the cable or in the connectors. Its now possible to easily connect a peripheral such as a USB printer up to 10 metres away using a 10m USB Cable.