When non-recursive CEF accounting is enabled, this counter tracks packets switched via this prefix that fall into the internal bucket, traffic whose next hop resolves directly without a recursive lookup through another route. Splitting internal versus external non-recursive traffic, see cefPrefixExternalNRPkts, lets an admin distinguish locally-resolved forwarding from traffic that required an extra recursive route lookup, which matters for understanding CEF's actual lookup-path efficiency for that prefix. A prefix whose next hop is a directly connected interface would accumulate its packet count here in the internal bucket, whereas a prefix requiring recursive resolution through a BGP next-hop would instead register in the external non-recursive counters.