This read-write INTEGER (1-5) sets how many retries AAA performs for each authentication method, whether Radius, local passwords, the local users table, or Tacacs. An admin tunes this to control how persistently the switch retries a given method before falling through to the next one in the method list. For example, an admin on a network with an occasionally slow RADIUS server raises this value so transient RADIUS timeouts don't immediately push authentication to a fallback method.