This read-only counter, in cells, tracks the number of valid EFCI=1 cells in the egress direction of this channel that were discarded at the class-of-service queue. An admin cares because these cells were already flagged as congested upstream and are now additionally being lost on egress, reflecting compounded congestion along the full path to the destination. For example, high discard counts here for already-marked cells would tell the admin that congestion is occurring at multiple points on this connection's path, not solely at this switch's egress queue.