Improved Connectivity Using Differential Priority Assignments in Military Network

Abstract

Considerable amount of work has been done on provisioning quality of service (QoS) over Internet protocol (IP) based networks, while challenges exist in implementing QoS over military IP networks. There is a need to provide improved connectivity for high priority voice calls even when the network is degraded. TDM based networks inherently permitted implementation of assured call completion using priority and preemption stacks, which is not natively supported in IP networks. The paper proposes that providing Differentiated priority to limited number of endpoints (nodes) may help to achieve improved call completion rate. This can be dynamically applied to users who are operating in relatively high active zones or hot war engagements. Most of earlier approaches use static configurations and require network wide reconfiguration and unacceptable downtime to implement changes. Under hot war scenarios, network resources are at a premium and network wide reconfiguration may not be possible. Differential Priority algorithm proposed in this paper can be implemented with minimum impact on network infrastructure to enhance the call completion rate and overall reliability of network. Findings in this paper are based on multiple simulation scenarios of voice calls carried over a typical military network topology.