This read-only Counter tallies the total number of frames discarded on the connection's egress side, aggregating the more specific egress discard reasons captured elsewhere (queue depth, DE threshold, CRC error, physical layer failure, and so on). An administrator watches this top-level counter before drilling into specific egress discard counters to identify the exact cause of loss on transmission. For example, a rise in xmtFramesDiscard together with a rise in xmtFramesDiscPhyLayerFail would point to a physical-layer problem on the outbound path as the specific cause.