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.
          
If a defect with a higher priority is raised after a Fault
Alarm has been issued, another Fault Alarm is issued.
          
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 rcDot1agCfmMepHighestPrDefect
variable in the notification:
          
   rcDot1agCfmMdIndex - Also the index of the MEP's
                      Maintenance Domain table entry
                      (rcDot1agCfmMdTable).
   rcDot1agCfmMaIndex - Also an index (with the MD table index)
                      of the MEP's Maintenance Association
                      network table entry
                      (rcDot1agCfmMaNetTable), and (with the MD
                      table index and component ID) of the
                      MEP's MA component table entry
                      (rcDot1agCfmMaCompTable).
   rcDot1agCfmMepIdentifier - MEP Identifier and final index
                      into the MEP table (rcDot1agCfmMepTable).