Haiti: projecting tactical network and systems management

The nature of recent military operations has been one of maximizing readiness (e.g., quick deployments) while minimizing in-theater personnel and equipment. Projecting technical expertise from the Continental United States (CONUS) to the deployed area of operations is critical to ensuring the success of the warfighter. Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY is the first of many opportunities to project tactical network and systems management (NSM) expertise from CONUS to tactical network managers and their respective tactical networks. NSM solutions were demonstrated and employed to provide remote monitoring and control capabilities from CONUS of the tactical packet network (TPN) and the mobile gateway van (MGV), both in Haiti. The TPN is the army tactical packet switched data network. The MGV provides users in the deployed tactical environment access to the non-classified Internet protocol router network (NIPRNET) for transmission of unclassified traffic. This paper will discuss the ways in which commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) NSM tools were used to manage the TPN and the MGV in support of operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY. TPN management was accomplished using the integrated management system (IMS) application. An integrated set of COTS tools (Hewlett Packard Network Node Manager, Remedy Action Request System, and Cisco Systems CiscoWorks) have been configured to remotely manage the MGV in Haiti. Managing the TPN and MGV successfully demonstrate the technical feasibility of projecting NSM capabilities from CONUS to deployed tactical networks.