The Origin-State-Id AVP solves a kind of tricky problem – how do you know if a Diameter peer has restarted?

It seems like a simple problem until you think about it.
One possible solution would be to add an AVP for “Recently Rebooted”, to be added on the first command queried of it from an endpoint, but what if there are multiple devices connecting to a Diameter endpoint?

The Origin-State AVP is a strikingly simple way to solve this problem. It’s a constantly incrementing counter that resets if the Diameter peer restarts.

If a client receives a Answer/Response where the Origin-State AVP is set to 10, and then the next request it’s set to 11, then the one after that is set to 12, 13, 14, etc, and then a request has the Origin-State AVP set to 5, the client can tell when it’s restarted by the fact 5 is lower than 14, the one before it.

It’s a constantly incrementing counter, that allows Diameter peers to detect if the endpoint has restarted.

Simple but effective.

You can find more about this in RFC3588 – the Diameter Base Protocol.