This value identifies the transport type carried over this internal backplane link, i.e. the protocol family (such as Ethernet) that the link is provisioned to carry. It matters on the internal Ethernet link that carries a blade's traffic from the chassis I/O Module up to a Fabric Interconnect over the backplane because on a converged chassis backplane, distinguishing the transport type is what separates this Ethernet-carrying link's records from any FC/FCoE-carrying links sharing the same physical hardware. A transport value of ether on this backplane link confirms this specific record concerns the Ethernet path over the backplane, as opposed to a Fibre Channel path on the same IOM.