Controlled Link Sharing and Quality of Service Data Transfer for Military Internetworking

This paper discusses system design issues related to enhancing present internetworking architectures to achieve controlled link sharing and high assurance data interchange guarantees. The military services are implementing both wired and wireless Internet Protocol IP based data networks to provide interoperable, heterogeneous network connectivity. At present, internetwork routing products forward network data traffic with limited concern for the link sharing policies or the specific quality requirements of the traffic flow. An enhanced Integrated Services IP architecture is emerging which provides solutions for a rich set of resource sharing requirements. We present an overview of this architecture and discuss performance issues for candidate system components in a military context. The strong conclusion is that, based upon recent research and emerging technologies, a dynamic mixture of guaranteed services and controlled link sharing is achievable over operational packet networks. We recommend future work to validate candidate servicing models and to understand military application, security, and policy management requirements within this enhanced architecture.