The MNR is used to discriminate telegrams stemming from the same SafetyProvider and is therefore used to detect timeliness errors such as outdated telegrams, telegrams received out-of-order, or streams of telegrams erroneously repeated by a network storing element (e.g. a router).

[RQ11.2] To be effective, the set of actually used MNR-values shall not be restricted to a small set. This could happen for connections which are restarted frequently, and which start counting from the same MNR value each time.

There are at least two ways to address this potential problem:

Option 1: Whenever the connection is terminated, the current value of the MNR shall be safely stored within non-volatile memory of the SafetyConsumer. After restart, the previously stored MNR is used for initialization of the MNR (i.e. in state S12 of the SafetyConsumer state machine).

Option 2: Whenever the SafetyConsumer is restarted (i.e. in state S12 of the SafetyConsumer state machine), the MNR is initialized with a 32-bit random number.