The direction from a central or controlling node to a remote node in a hierarchical network, or (sometimes) the direction away from the current node without respect to hierarchical ordering. The word is often used as a verb: to downline or to downline load, i.e. to send data from a central node to a remote end-user’s node in a network. The remote node may not have the facilities to store the data permanently, in which case the downline load would be necessary each time the remote node is restarted. When the remote node does have permanent storage facilities, downline loading may be used to supply newer versions of data to the remote node. Compare upline.