Beyond the Hype: Policies for Military Network Operations

Policy-based network management promises to deliver a high degree of automation for military network management. In the past few years, an increasing number of military network management systems have begun to require support for policy-based network management, in a quest for increased automation, improved network performance, and reduced manpower needed to establish and maintain the network. This activity has led to a proliferation of studies to determine how to best utilize policies to achieve the above goals. Large teams of researchers and engineers are working at a feverish pace to prescribe the ideal policy architecture for military network management. One of the biggest obstacles facing these teams are the unrealistic - or sometimes even unspecified - expectations for policybased management. Policy is being touted as the way to achieve everything a network needs, from on-demand quality of service to conformance to vaguely defined military doctrine. An increasing number of network management requirements are being appended with the qualification "based on policy". It is becoming more and more unclear what policies are expected to achieve in a network. The purpose of this paper is to look beyond the hype and attempt to clearly identify the functionality that policies can enable in support of military network operations. The paper discusses the types of policies that are required for supporting network operations in military networks, their functionality, and the resolution of policy conflicts for network management.