This counter counts received frames that had the DE (Discard Eligible) bit set, marking them as lower-priority traffic that the network is permitted to drop first under load. A steadily increasing value tells an admin that a substantial share of inbound traffic on this port is being sent as best-effort rather than guaranteed. For example, a network engineer reviewing bursty FTP traffic on a Frame Relay link would expect this counter to rise during transfers that exceed the committed rate.