The number of best paths to calculate as candidate BGP additional paths. DC-BGP calculates the N best paths for each destination as candidates for advertisement to BGP peers as additional paths. The candidate paths are the N best paths avoiding duplicate BGP next hops. They include the best path, and alternative lower preference / higher cost paths. For the default value of 1 the only candidate path is the best path for each destination. A value of 2 is sufficient to calculate the best path and a backup path (if available) for each destination. For small values of N the benefit of fast convergence after N-1 failures can outweigh the cost of calculating and advertising the best N routes, but for larger values of N the benefit does not justify the cost. Therefore this field should only be set to a small value. The number of paths advertised to each BGP peer can be restricted at the BGP peer or peer group level (bgpPeerAfiSafiAddPathBestN or bgpPeergrAfiSafiAddPathBestN), but it is not possible to advertise more paths than are specified here as candidates. This field can only be modified while RM is admin down.