Recommendations for realizing SOAP publish/subscribe in tactical networks

In this paper, we investigate the publish/subscribe standard WS-Notiflcation with respect to deployment and use in the tactical domain. We leverage a network emulator, CORE, to generate a testbed for controlled and repeatable experiments exhibiting typical tactical network traits: Limited data rates, delays, and packet loss, as well as node mobility and subsequent sporadic loss of connectivity. The work was performed in context of the NATO CSO/IST-118 “SOA recommendations for disadvantaged grids in the tactical domain” group. Our goal was not only to see how the WS-Notification standard behaves in the tactical domain, but also to investigate optimizations (here: compression) as part of our work for giving recommendations towards tactical SOA deployment. Our findings include that compression in general is beneficial and should be leveraged. However, the broker-based nature of WS-Notification proved, as expected, to be problematic in disruptive environments (single point of failure), and so measures that can mitigate this should be investigated further.