A device used to connect a computer to a telephone company digital subscriber line (DSL) service for Internet access. Compared to analog dial-up, DSL significantly increases the bandwidth between the user's computer and the Internet. Download speeds have reached 3 Mbps and beyond, but the connection is asynchronous. In order to prevent users with lower-cost cable access from hosting high-traffic Web servers, the upload speed is approximately 10 times slower. Telephone companies also routinely change IP addresses assigned to users to prevent Web hosting (see DDNS). See DSL and cable/DSL gateway.