System and method to facilitate network element failure detection and session restoration in a network environment

One or more non-transitory tangible media encoding logic that includes instructions for execution by a processor, wherein the execution causes the processor to perform operations comprising:

• maintaining, by a Diameter Routing Agent (DRA), an availability status for a plurality of Policy and Charging Rules Functions (PCRFs);
• receiving a request associated with a user equipment (UE) session, wherein a first PCRF of the plurality of PCRFs is serving the UE session;
• determining that the first PCRF serving the UE session is unavailable;
• and
• re-establishing the UE session at a second PCRF of the plurality of PCRFs that is available, wherein the re-establishing is performed without terminating the UE session, comprising:
• transmitting from the DRA to a Packet Data Network (PDN) Gateway (PGW) a request comprising a first session identifier identifying a first session between the UE and the first PCRF;
• receiving at the DRA a response from the PGW comprising a second session identifier identifying a second session between the UE and the second PCRF, wherein the first session identifier is different than the second session identifier;
• and
• transmitting to the second PCRF a message comprising the second session identifier.

A Diameter Routing Agent comprising:

• at least one memory element for storing data;
• and
• at least one processor to execute instructions associated with the data, wherein executing the instructions causes the Diameter Routing Agent (DRA) to perform operations comprising:
• maintaining, by the DRA, an availability status for a plurality of Policy and Charging Rules Functions (PCRFs);
• receiving a request associated with a user equipment (UE) session, wherein a first PCRF of the plurality of PCRFs is serving the UE session;
• determining that the first PCRF serving the UE session is unavailable;
• and
• re-establishing the UE session at a second PCRF of the plurality of PCRFs that is available, wherein the re-establishing is performed without terminating the UE session, comprising:
• transmitting from the DRA to a Packet Data Network (PDN) Gateway (PGW) a request comprising a first session identifier identifying a first session between the UE and the first PCRF;
• receiving at the DRA a response from the PGW comprising a second session identifier identifying a second session between the UE and the second PCRF, wherein the first session identifier is different than the second session identifier;
• and
• transmitting to the second PCRF a message comprising the second session identifier.