DOD hosts massive interoperability test

Trying to enable your network to communicate securely with a diverse set of suppliers and business partners? If you think you've got interoperability problems, consider the case of the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Defense Department regularly pulls together multinational coalitions for warfighting, peacekeeping and disaster relief operations with dozens of allies that change on a moment's notice. Each time, the Defense Department and its allies build a command and control network from a hodgepodge of radios, satellite gear and computers. That's why the department hosts annual interoperability testing events to help make sure its allies can communicate with each other during an emergency.

For the past two weeks, the U.S. European Command has sponsored Combined Endeavor 2006 (CE 06), a two-week interoperability event in Baumholder, Germany. CE 06 is the 12th annual event held in Europe, and it had forces from 41 countries, including Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Participants tested their ability to send data, voice, images and video over an IP backbone using a wide variety of mobile radio and satellite communications devices.

"As we get called to respond to crises like Hurricane Katrina or an earthquake in Pakistan, the political side develops coalitions, but we have to be ready to roll out the network,'' says Lt. Col. Joe Angyal, exercise director for CE 06. "It's a major challenge for us, because we never know what the coalition is going to be. . . . When we find ourselves out in the battlefield, it's like a game of Yahtzee for network planners like me.''

Cisco provided the routers, switches and software that comprised the core network infrastructure for CE 06. The core network used 100Mbps links to connect four nodes in Germany and one satellite node in Bosnia. A HAM radio connection linked the European network to South Africa through Finland. Connections in the field were 2Mbps, which is typical for battlefield operations. The network supported 1,200 users.

"This is the first time that we have provided the network for Combined Endeavor,'' says Harald Vermanen, NATO liaison executive at Cisco. "We help the armies that have our products. We have participated in other interoperability tests or testing of new products . . . but Combined Endeavor is by far the biggest testing event.''

Combined Endeavor tested equipment in six main areas: single-channel radio; circuit-switched telephony, including VoIP; video teleconferencing; core services; data transmission systems, including routers; and transmission systems. CE 06 participants said more militaries are using IP as their communications standard and creating converged rather than separate voice, data and video networks. However, it was still tricky integrating older military radios, telephones and other communications gear with the modern Cisco backbone network. Many of the partners bring analog equipment,'' Angyal says. "It's a major challenge to integrate the older analog equipment with the completely IP backbone system.''