Programs Home
Overview
Mission
Background
Solicitation
BAA 04-32 (Archived)
|
|
|
|
Situation Aware Protocols in Edge Network Technologies (SAPIENT)
Program Manager: Dr. Mari Maeda
Background:
Network-centric operations use applications which enhance the ability to rapidly orient, observe, decide and act. The challenges of an increasing number of networked applications and the complexity of the networks which interconnect them have been met in part by the internetworking protocol architecture (IP) and its transmission control protocol (TCP). A series of incremental optimizations of the TCP transport protocol for the commonly encountered cases of delay, throughput, congestion and link errors for research and commercial environments has led to a protocol which is often ill-suited to the challenges encountered in military operations. For example, the purposeful information-hiding inherent in the TCP/IP layering architecture has the consequence of amplifying the effects of link and network impairments on applications, such as grossly reducing throughput or increasing latency as a consequence of error losses.
This has rarely been an issue in the commercial Internet, since errors occur infrequently, network capacity is plentiful and delays are tens of milliseconds at worst. In contrast, the edge of military networks is characterized by mobility and wireless interconnection, with long delays when satellite networks are used for far-flung operations. For example, a network route might include any or all of satellite links, airborne links and links which are part of a mobile ad-hoc network, and the network edge might consist of small units operating with a vehicle or dismounted. Experience suggests that conventional protocols fare poorly in such extreme network conditions, providing inadequate service for key applications. As applications are frequently developed under operating assumptions similar to the network protocol, the performance of applications in the network conditions actually encountered in military networks may be inadequate.
The Situation-Aware Protocols In Edge Network Technologies (SAPIENT) program seeks to address these deficiencies with a new generation of cognitive protocol architectures.
|
