This mask provides quick access to the general connectivity of the repeater. Each bit corresponds to the link status of a repeater port. If the bit is set to 1 then link pulses are being received, as per the IEEE specification. A bit value of zero indicates one of four conditions: - There is nothing physically attached to the port. - The port is not configured for twisted-pair. The AUI interface, for example, does not generate or test for link pulses. - The device attached to the port does not generate the link pulses specified by the IEEE standard. STARLAN devices, for example, do not generate such pulses. - The port is configured to ignore link pulses (see srepeaterPortLinkPulse). The least significant bit in the mask corresponds to repeater port 1; the high-order eight bits are always zero.