Research Summaries

Back Customizing Application Headers for Improved Warfighting Communications

Fiscal Year 2021
Division Graduate School of Operational & Information Sciences
Department Computer Science
Investigator(s) Pittner, Kenneth J.
Sponsor Naval Information Warfare Center, Pacific (Navy)
Summary Network connectivity continues to be a high demand and low-density commodity that is commonly identified as a rate-limiting factor for efficient communication pathways in many environments. Current shipboard communications have an even greater disadvantage; they are limited to a fraction of the speed out to sea compared to public commercial businesses. In this environment, improving efficient utilization of all available, yet limited, assets are paramount to maintaining our military advantage. Many applications have unnecessary bits in network packets to handle the edge cases that are not the bulk of network traffic. This study will explore all parts of various application headers to determine which applications stand to have bits removed more easily. It will then develop a proof of concept interpreter box that will truncate these application packets. The truncated packets will be sent over a LAN, then reassembled on the other side of the LAN. These novel modifications will be invisible to the user and the world wide web. For the Navy, a satellite link back to shore is essentially a space LAN. An interpreter box could be installed on the ship for the packet before it leaves the ship, and then another interpreter box could be installed on the shore side to receive the packet, reassemble it, and send it out; thus saving bits transferred on the satellite, the bottle neck of the communications path.
Keywords faster satellite connections network efficiency
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal