The value of this attribute determines the method through which buffering resources are allocated to ports sharing a pool of buffers. The buffering resources associated with a series of ports are finite. This buffer pool may be statistically allocated to the individual ports sharing the pool or they may be allocated such that the traffic pattern dictates which ports temporarily consume the majority of the buffers. The value of this attribute determines the level of buffer sharing or over-allocation that can take place among ports sharing a buffer pool. Higher levels of over-allocation increase the likelyhood (under heavy load) of a relatively few number of ports consuming all the buffers in a pool, causing packets to be dropped on other ports due to buffer starvation. A value of 'minimumOverAllocation(1)' indicates that only a small amount of resource sharing is allowed. Greater resource sharing is allowed if the value of this attribute is 'mediumOverAllocation(2)' and the chance of over-allocation occurring is maximized by the specifying that 'maximumOverAllocation(3)' is desired. In lossless mode, the buffer allocation and thresholds are such that pause frames are generated to the endstations prior to frames being discarded due to lack of available buffers, allowing the end stattions to back off. This mode allows for lossless behavior at the expense of throughput. Lossless PFC mode operates in a similar fashion to lossless but provides the service on a per-priority (802.1p) basis. 'spb-scaled(6)' is a mode similar to 'mediumOverAllocation(2)', but optimized for scaled SPB setups. The value of this attribute is consulted when the system is initialized. Changing the value of this attribute will therefore not take effect until after the system is restarted.