Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) is equipment that is either a destination or source for digital data. Examples of DTE's are computers, printers, application servers, file servers, routers and bridges, dumb terminals...etc. DTE do not generally communicate with each other. In order to do so they need to use DCE to carry out the communication. DTE does not need to know how data is sent or received; the communications details are left to the DCE.