Description: The VCCI, or Virtual Circuit Connection Identifier, is a variable that identifies a virtual circuit connection between two nodes. A virtual circuit connection, or VCC, consists of one virtual circuit link or a series of concatenated virtual circuit links. In its most common usage, the value of the VCCI is unique between the nodes at the extremities of the virtual circuit connection, but not on a network-wide basis. Hence, its value needs to be qualified by the ATM addresses of these end nodes. At one of these end nodes, its value needs to be qualified by the ATM address of the far-end node. Some applications can extend this definition to make the VCCI value unique on a network- wide basis. This is specially possible when VCCIs are administered from a management system and not locally assigned by a node.

In this MIB, the VCCI serves as a label to be assigned by an external application. VCCIs need to be unique for a given remote peer, however, the same VCCI can be reused for different remote peers. Accordingly, the combination of (remote address, VCCI) will always be unique for any given agent. This allows a controller to refer to a VC by the VCCI and remote peer address, in contrast to VPI/VCI and port. It thus constitutes a convenience feature, providing an alternative identification scheme for a VC which is managed by an outside user, such as a management system.

The remote peer address can be specified in NSAP, E.164, or GWID format, as indicated by the address type (vismRemoteAddressType). Depending on the address type specified, uniqueness will be relative to NSAP, E.164 address, or GWID.

While this object is writeable, it is recommended not to change the value of this object once it has been created. However, upon modification, it will be ensured that the resulting combination of VCCI and remote address is unique. Requests that would result in a non-unique combination will be rejected. Beyond this, there are no other integrity constraints that will be enforced for this object. This includes network-level consistency whether the remote peer, or an external controller, use the same VCCI designation for the VC.