This read-write enumerated value specifies the type of name being bound in this entry: uninniladdr (an unspecified/UNI-NNI address, or similarly a placeholder type), e164, nsap, or sni, determining which addressing scheme the accompanying nameName value should be interpreted under. This is necessary because the switch supports multiple ATM/telephony addressing conventions and needs to know which parsing rules to apply to the raw bytes in nameName. An engineer binding an ATM NSAP-format address to a logical port would set nameType to nsap(3) so the switch correctly interprets the byte layout of the paired nameName value.