A MEP has a persistent defect condition. A notification (fault alarm) is sent to the management entity with the OID of the MEP that has detected the fault. Whenever a MEP has a persistent defect, it may or may not generate a Fault Alarm to warn the system administrator of the problem, as controlled by the MEP Fault Notification Generator State Machine and associated Managed Objects. Only the highest-priority defect, as shown in Table 20-1, is reported in the Fault Alarm. The management entity receiving the notification can identify the system from the network source address of the notification, and can identify the MEP reporting the defect by the indices in the OID of the dot1agCfmMepHighestPrDefect variable in the notification.