41 nations test radios, satellite gear and IP networks.
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.”
Although the Combined Endeavor network did not carry classified communications, it was secured with encryption, because it carried sensitive information. “It was about the same level of security that we would roll out on an operation,” Angyal says.
The Defense Department sponsored the event and estimates that the total cost to the participants was about $10 million.
A significant component of CE 06 is the process of documenting the testing that was done. The Defense Department will produce an interoperability guide published on CD-ROM that will be distributed to all the participants. The guide offers shortcuts to enable communications between the equipment that various militaries have deployed. It has more than 12,000 technical test results with accompanying technical data configuration and information.
“It’s like having a copy of the test before you have to take it,” Angyal says. “For multinational network planners, this guide takes out all the guesswork.”
Many IT companies, including Cisco and Marconi, donated equipment for CE 06 testing, but military staff ran the tests.
“This interoperability guide that we produce is very pure,” Angyal says. “We have a high degree of confidence in it, because the soldiers who operate in the field conduct the testing. We don’t have people from Cisco running the tests. . . . All the soldiers that are involved are IT specialists.”
Although the focus of Combined Endeavor is on technical testing of equipment, the exercise lets the Defense Department improve interoperability on the IT staff and policy levels, too.
“We bring these guys together to understand and communicate with each other,” Angyal says. “We also test on the technical level, router to router and switch to switch, as well as procedural interoperability, in terms of how you use IT and how you deploy IT. Finally, we test operational interoperability.”
Participants of Combined Endeavor say similar but smaller-scale operational testing could be useful for network managers at large corporations or municipalities.
“If you’re General Motors, you might want to figure out the companies that you want to work with and the level of network access that you want to provide them, then you’d figure out some test strings and bring in an independent consultant to verify the testing. Then you’d document your testing and publish it as a guide for you and your partners,” Angyal says.
Cisco says it sees similar testing among law enforcement officials worldwide.
“It makes sense from the view of the police in Amsterdam running interoperability tests with the Dutch Army,” Vermanen says. “They are testing this kind of communications and procedures to deal in the best way with disasters like Sept. 11.”
Multinational companies that work in remote locations also could benefit from interoperability testing in the field.
“If you’re an oil company getting into an area where there is hardly any communications that is good, you might want to find out up front whether your communications systems are going to work . . . with the local fire department,” Vermanen says.
Combined Endeavor includes 23 nations of NATO, 12 members of NATO’s Partnership for Peace and nonaligned countries, such as Switzerland and Austria.
Next for the Defense Department is a similar interoperability-testing event called Africa Endeavor, which will include 28 African nations. The U.S. Pacific Command will host its own interoperability event with 18 Asian nations in September.
“It’s important to test products in a very realistic environment,” Angyal says. “It’s one thing if the equipment works in a lab. It’s another thing to get it out here and get it dirty and put in the drinking-straw bandwidth that we have in the battlefield.”
