Slashdot Mirror


Military To Spend $42M To Build Advanced Network Control

coondoggie writes "BBN, which was bought by defense giant Raytheon today, got almost $11 million to help build self-configuring network technology that would identify traffic, let the network infrastructure prioritize it down to the end user, reallocate bandwidth between users or classes of users, and automatically make quality-of-service decisions. The advanced network technology is being developed by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and will include support for features like 32 levels of network traffic prioritization that will let data with a higher priority will be handled more expeditiously than traffic with a lower priority."

16 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by digitalunity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    $11M to reimplement IPv6 QOS. I suppose it's a bit more advanced since it makes QOS determination based on users or groups, but that doesn't seem that difficult.

    Consider me unimpressed.

    --
    You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
    1. Re:Wow by geekoid · · Score: 3, Funny

      Someone else with no experience doing massive implementations of new infrastructure spouting off.

      Consider me unimpressed.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    2. Re:Wow by elnyka · · Score: 5, Insightful

      $11M to reimplement IPv6 QOS. I suppose it's a bit more advanced since it makes QOS determination based on users or groups, but that doesn't seem that difficult.

      Consider me unimpressed.

      Dude, there might be strategic/tactical decisions for deciding explicitly not to use IPv6. Notice that I'm not saying that those strategic/tactical decisions are necessarily valid for long-term maintenance, extensibility or external compatibility (the later of which might even be undesirable from a strategic/tactical POV.)

      The road of technical divergence can either take you to innovation or to a complete technical fiasco. That fork is many times not only dependent on technical merits alone. Besides, iirc, IPv6 QOS is still as of yet to be developed (not a criticism mind you). It supports only 7 priority levels whereas the proposed technology will support 32 levels. A typical military subnet, with stationary and mobile units, all of them plugged and receiving feeds from a bunch of disparate devices might never need more than 7 or 8, but as you start plugging those nets together, you can (and will) easily require a finer priority granularity than that.

      Add to that the ability to determine priority by user or groups, and the problem cannot be dismissed as "meh, should not be that difficult." There might be other defense-specific requirements that we might not know (.ie. limiting jumbopackets by priority or origin.)

      Besides, this is being researched by DARPA, the harbinger of ARPANET and MQ-Predator, not some 2009 rendition of kozmo.com.

      I know that here on /. we like to fling turds at the government's white elephants, but c'mon. There must likely be be good technical/domain-specific reasons (or at least good enough) for an entity like DARPA to perform research on it, reasons beyond the ones that might impress you.

  2. Re:Uhm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Your post.

  3. Re:Uhm by kevinNCSU · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They're talking military networks so low priority traffic would be non mission/time-critical traffic. For example, email with a bunch of power point slides for a briefing might be low priority traffic, whereas an Alert for an incoming cruise missile to the Command and Control Systems might be considered slightly more high priority.

  4. Re:Dose it by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Early experiments using the STFU protocol showed that network traffic went to zero. While this had positive cost impact, for example because you could omit all those costly cables without further harm, it was finally concluded that data rates above zero had enough advantages to offset those costs.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  5. Opportunity! by Cornwallis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm counting the new Internet Control Czar in the White House to use this to shut down the Internet as-needed for "national security" or other "emergencies" so I'm going to dust off my old BBS software and install another landline.

    1. Re:Opportunity! by FudRucker · · Score: 4, Funny

      if the US Gov gets any more czars this place is going to start looking like Russia before the soviet era, it could be a government plot to make post soviet Russia jealous.

      --
      Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
  6. Re:Uhm by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, every manager knows that power point slides have always the highest priority. Fuck those missiles.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  7. is it ipv6? by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Insightful

    if it isn't, an awesome example of government stupidity, since just as this thing gets off the ground, ipv6 will probably finally take over

    it it is ipv6, look for ipv6 to be mandated on the industry

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  8. And now.. by kronosopher · · Score: 5, Insightful

    we hear the death knell of net neutrality.

    The corporate think-tanks that envisioned the internet have known for a long time they had unwittingly created a network without strong authentication. This means anyone can jack-in anonymously and spread whatever socially dissident or commie/terrorist agenda they want. So in the interest of controlling our minds and the accessibility of information they are now attempting to re-implement the internet and in doing so shape traffic along arbitrary guidelines which of course will be entirely influenced by corporate profiteering.

    I know that this project is only for military use, but it is only a matter of time before corporations are lured in by the promise of an unprecedented amount of power/control/oversight on their networks.

  9. Sounds like a workaround by FudRucker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    to move net neutrality to /dev/null

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
  10. Re:The Next Internet? by Flea+of+Pain · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh! You mean like marking P2P as "low priority" during peak usage hours...oh wait...

    --
    Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
  11. Re:$11M v $42M, before anyone asks... by WindowlessView · · Score: 4, Informative

    This has a lot of complicated requirements. If you scan through the pdf "DARPA's Military Networking Protocol" link in the article I don't see how this doesn't extend well beyond 3 years and $42 million. E.G. "As deliverables, performers must provide protocol implementations that replace or modify both the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) for the user level devices and the Network Controllers."

    Throw in the pace of defense companies move and it would be a miracle.

    --
    Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
  12. Re:Uhm by Dan541 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The lowest bidder.

    --
    An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
  13. OK, guys... by sconeu · · Score: 4, Informative

    The DoD is big into what they're calling "Network-Centric Warfare". US doctrine relies heavily on information dispersal and access.

    This is (currently) an effort to make sure the right info gets into the right hands on the battlefield.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.