Military forces are looking to maximize the availability and robustness of mission-critical communications and applications in tactical IP networks. Being able to provide real-time, end-to-end guaranteed QoS is a key capability for successful Network Centric Warfare and Operations.

Defense Communication and Infrastructure (CIS) deployments based on IP differ significantly from standard commercial needs. Force deployments can occur anywhere in the world, often in harsh environments, with an immediate need to establish communications with minimal configuration. These forces and resources are highly mobile - consequently network connectivity may change regularly as they, or parts of the system, are redeployed or influenced by the local environment.

It is within this challenging operational environment that real-time communications networks must remain deployed in a robust and resilient manner: communications resources must remain allocated to mission-critical applications.

The tactical military network must support a range of demanding uses including messaging, command and control systems, video conferencing, Voice over IP, data replication services, E-mail, web services, and file sharing. It is a technical and physical reality that bandwidth remains limited and can change due to operational circumstances. Therefore, Resource Control is required to ensure that mission critical applications are intelligently allocated the bandwidth required for effective communications, under all load and network configuration conditions, to ensure mission success.

Operax provides mission-proven COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) solutions for guaranteeing end-to-end communication in systems for military communications networks designed on the principles of Network Centric Warfare (NCW), Network Centric Operations (NCO), Network Enabled Capability (NEC), and Network Based Defense. Operax technology, with its real-time awareness of network topologies and its ability to react immediately to changes in bandwidth allocation policies, suits the needs of the new generation of joint international forces working with multimedia communication.

Key Features and Benefits

Operax Command Resource Controller provides a number of key capabilities allowing bandwidth and network policies to be managed in real-time across multiple applications on a per session basis:

• Guarantees quality of service for mission critical applications whilst allowing non critical data access when resources permit
• Real-time network topology aware. Through use of network probes, Operax Command Resource Controller detects when the underlying router configuration changes as a result of equipment or link failure/restoration ensuring network bandwidth usage allocation is always current
• Priority sessions access network resources according to command and control policies
• Independent of application type and underlying transport network. This allows new applications to be deployed quickly with prioritization and bandwidth requirements being configured at one central point
• Can remove the need for block booking of bandwidth for services such as Video Conferencing ensuring that network bandwidth is used more efficiently
• Commercial Off The Shelf solution leading to cost and deployment efficiency
• Supports mixed technology and vendor network architectures
• Supports discrete and convergent Land, Naval and Air communications operations
• Deployed in NATO operational environments today

Operax was selected by the Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) to provide Resource and Admission Control for its award winning TITAAN (Theatre Independent Tactical Army and Airforce Network) project. This pioneered both technology and development methods for Network Centric Warfare. TITAAN is run with military leadership together with technology experts from the industry using off-the-shelf products from best-of-breed vendors. Taking advantage of these methods, TITAAN has been developed using only fractions of the time and money traditionally invested in similar systems.

TITAAN carries a wide range of applications where Operax Command Resource Controller is used to guarantee bandwidth and QoS for multiple services such as voice, video conferencing and tactical data links. The system is currently live and deployed in theatre worldwide.

TITAAN was awarded best NCW program from a coalition partner at the NCW awards 2004.

To read more on the TITAAN project and the Operax application please download the pdfs under Product Literature.