The node.counter is a security measure. If your node.cert is stolen, they can impersonate your pool. Luckily for you, you can generate a new node.cert (auromatically with higher counter value encoded inside). The network accepts the node.cert that has highest counter value and rejects all others.
Just run cardano-cli node issue-op-cert .... several times. You can watch the counter value increasing cat node.counter
When you are sure your counter value is high enough, take the node.cert and copy to BP.
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