Transforming legacy network systems for use in the Army Future Force

This paper proposes a method to integrate legacy networks into the overall Army Future Force (FF) network in a useful manner. A serious technical challenge presented by such coexistence of next-generation and legacy networks is the ability to provide sufficient end-to-end quality-of-service (QoS) performance. Providing end-to-end QoS is challenging when one or more subnetworks involved in the end-to-end communication was not intended to provide QoS. Another technical challenge lies in effectively managing legacy networks. Typically, legacy networks are highly reliant on static planning, and were not designed to provide a dynamic network management capability. This paper addresses a variety of technical issues associated with the integration of legacy network systems into the Army FF, focusing primarily on QoS and network management. This paper then presents concepts that address these issues using the advanced extremely high frequency (AEHF) satellite system as a case study.