This counter reports the cumulative number of bytes of the configured traffic type that this port has dropped because they exceeded the configured rate limit. A steadily increasing value tells an admin that the configured rate or burst is being exceeded regularly, which could mean either a genuine storm/loop condition or a limit configured too conservatively for normal traffic. For example, an admin seeing this counter climb rapidly right after enabling storm-control on an uplink port might realize the configured rate is too low for legitimate multicast traffic and needs to be raised.