Interconnected communication networks

Traditionally most services have used several independently operating specially developed communications networks to carry their specific message and traffic types. They have been labour intensive requiring operator assistance when transferring messages across different communication systems. Communication systems currently being deployed are fully automated, thus in principle enabling communication networks to be interconnected and passing messages without operator intervention. However, the message formats being used need to be (at least partly) recognised by each communication system for it to be possible to forward it to the intended recipient in the right manner. Also the traffic capacity differs between interconnected communication systems operating in different frequency bands. There is therefore a need to optimise the throughput between each involved communication system thus making it possible to reduce the signalling overhead on each link. This paper describes how Internet related services, such as email forwarding, have been implemented through specially developed proxies in order to make the best possible use of the embedded features in two different HF systems, KV 90 and Mil-Std-188-141A ALE.