This read-only counter tallies the total number of ATM cells received on this channel in the ingress direction, i.e., arriving from the customer/port side before any policing or queueing. Admins use this as the baseline traffic-volume figure for the channel, comparing it against downstream counters like chanIngrXmtCells or various discard counters to see how much of the received traffic actually made it through versus being dropped. For example, a large gap between chanIngrRcvCells and chanIngrXmtCells growth over time would indicate significant cell loss somewhere in the ingress path for that channel.