This read-only object identifies the pseudo-wire type. This identifies which specific Layer-2 encapsulation the pseudowire uses to carry the cable modem's traffic, such as raw Ethernet or VLAN-tagged Ethernet, so a mismatch between this type and what the customer's far-end equipment expects would show up as a pseudowire that appears up at the control-plane level but delivers frames the far end can't correctly decode. A pseudowire provisioned as raw Ethernet when the customer's PE router expects VLAN-tagged frames could come up administratively while still failing to pass traffic the far end recognizes correctly.