A COTS based Testbed to Develop Mission Tailored Solutions: Versatile Communications Backbone Network

The NATO Response Force operational concept is based on the rapid deployment of expeditionary forces at a number of locations with mission tailored capabilities. Commercially available products fail on key NATO requirements for various reasons, e.g. form factor, types of supported interfaces, and resilience, to name a few. Therefore a commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) technology based testbed for the development of mission tailored communication functions has been drafted. As a first application of this testbed, a tailored, multi-service, highly redundant LAN/MAN ring communication system for deployed military CIS infrastructure, the so called Versatile Communications Backbone Network (VCBN), has been developed by the authors. The VCBN concept provides a very-high reliability backbone ring, made up of two dual-redundant IP rings. The rings can be implemented using different media, and therefore support very well the phased deployment of communications into theatre. To ease industrialisation, the VCBN nodes are implemented using COTS products: Intel-based single board computers, standard Ethernet interfaces, and a ring logic and node management application running on Linux. The system incorporates the functionality required for expeditionary deployments, and the strictly needed interfaces, without the complexity of commercial systems that, in general, render suboptimal solutions in terms of space complexity and cost. Each VCBN node can be fitted into a 2U, 19 inch rack-mount. Initial analysis has proved that VCBN nodes arc operationally and commercially feasible, at an affordable cost. While established with the VCBN application in mind, the test environment used for the development is well suited for the development and mission tailoring of other communication functions.