Tactical Wireless Communications and Networks: Design Concepts and Challenges

11.3 Joint Network Management Architectural Approach

This section presents a joint NM architectural approach, focusing on the networks of different US services. While these concepts are designed for US networks, they apply equally to the various networks within the same force, as well as coalition networks. The approach passes information between the cipher text NMs of the army, navy, and air force networks, such that intelligent decisions (routing and policy) can be made. This architecture is a “strawman”¹ approach, where QoS and policy information are passed in an abstracted but sufficient manner. It can also pass along other NM information and generate a service provider interface (SPI) that will ensure joint interoperability between these otherwise independent peer networks.

One of the most important constraints of the GIG is that each network must have a cipher text core that follows National Security Agent (NSA) standards for HAIPE encryption. The cipher text cores of different networks are envisioned to merge and create one seamless cipher text core, where packets can flow from one network to another, helping the warfighter carry out joint missions.

Figure 11.1 depicts how the plain text enclaves (subnets) communicate over a cipher text core network, with different cipher text networks aggregated to create the tactical GIG. Packets are encrypted as they enter the cipher text network and decrypted as they reach their destination subnet. As discussed in earlier chapters of ...