Traffic engineering for NATO satellite communications services

This paper introduces a new technical approach to extend traffic engineering beyond terrestrial transport networks, down to deployed networks and to mobile communications elements attaching to those networks, over satellite communications channels. The paper goes through the notions of IP over satcom, and the networking characteristics of Layer-2 and Layer-3 satellite communications modems. It then introduces the use of Satcom Convergence Routers as MPLS switches, switching logical traffic channels to physical modem ports. These logical channels can be separately provisioned, activated and pre-empted, based on class of service requirements, bandwidth availability and setup priority, using MPLS Traffic Engineering techniques. This results in maximizing flexibility, bandwidth utilization efficiency, and resilience of NATO´s emerging high availability satellite communications services.