SoftwareErrors is a read-only Counter32 counting the number of software errors, described in the MIB as protocol errors, recorded for this IP host. Because these are protocol-level rather than physical errors, an admin seeing this counter increase for a IP host should suspect malformed frames or a protocol mismatch rather than a cabling fault, and — since this isb table duplicates the row layout of the MIB's ilb table but is sampled and indexed independently — a given host can show different collection intervals in isb than it does in ilb. A steady trickle of software errors for host 10.4.12.30 alongside a zero HardwareErrors count for the same row narrows the problem down to how the endpoints are speaking, not the wire between them.