Towards a Unified Local Area Network Architecture for the United States Air Force

This paper provides an overview of a comnunications system currently being specified by the Air Force's Unified Local Area Network Architecture program (ULANA). The UIANA network, in conjunction with the DoD long haul Defense Data Network (DDN), aims to integrate the Air Force's current mix of heterogeneous computers, communications and operating systems and applications packages into a flexible, survivable, and interoperable backbone for Air Force Information Systems. The following aspects of the ULANA program are described: •objectives and scope of the ULANA program, •functions and components of the ULANA system, •a survivable (through segmentation) signal distribution system •a unified family of Network Inter face and Interconnect Units, their generic types and interconnection mechanisms over multiple channels, •a layered protocol architecture which permits communications between diverse devices and application processes associated with them within the ULANA local area network, and •a distributed network management system. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possible impact of the Unified Local Area Network Architecture on the Air Force distributed information systems and a summary of the architectural principles employed by ULANA.