This is the maximum number of times SCTP will retransmit unacknowledged data chunks within this specific association before declaring it failed, distinct from the per-path retransmission limits (cSctpAssocRemAddressMaxPathRtx), and per the MIB it must be smaller than the sum of all per-path limits for this association. Applications can adjust it per-association at runtime, so a latency-tolerant bulk-transfer association might be configured with a higher retry budget than a real-time signaling association that needs to fail fast. If this is set too low relative to the actual per-path retry budgets, the association could give up and close even while individual paths still have retransmission attempts remaining, an inconsistency worth checking if associations fail unexpectedly early.