Two commands which are often confused or misunderstood, are the clock rate and

bandwidth commands.

In order to understand clock rate we first need to understand how the cabling works on
routers. When connecting two routers together with a serial cable, one of the routers
needs to host the DCE (Data Communications Equipment) side of the cable, and the other
will host the DTE (Date Terminal Equipment) side. Most serial cables are marked on the
connector if its the DTE or DCE.

So whats the difference between the 2 sides? The DCE side of the cable is the side that
sets the speed of the link (also known as clocking). Based on this, its safe to assume that
the cable coming out of your router and going to your service provider is the DTE side,
since you service provider sets the speed of the line based on the subscription you have
purchased. The DTE side of the cable is where the communications terminate ie: your
router terminates the connection from the service provider.

From a configuration point of view the DCE side of the cable is able to use the clock rate
command to set the speed of the line. If the command is not used the interface will run at
the maximum speed supported by the interface. If you have only subscribed for a 64k
line, then the clock rate would have been set on the DCE side of the cable using the
command clock rate 64000 under the interface.