Systems engineering and performance evaluation for the Defense Information Systems Network

This paper presents systems engineering and performance analysis and evaluation concepts for planning, designing, operating, and managing the Defense Information Systems Network (DISN). The DISN uses Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) high-speed communications services to support a wide class of applications that require high-speed networking and will provide multi-media conferencing, distributed simulation, and training. DISN, via an ATM-based wide area network, will accommodate a wide variety of traffic types, each requiring proper traffic management and congestion control mechanisms. By doing so, new value-added communications services will be offered for the Department of Defense. This paper addresses key aspects of the multimedia services that the DISN will provide and discusses technical issues concerning the quality-of-service. Traffic modeling and characterization of the DISN, capacity management and sizing, and allocation of network resources in response to requirements are studied. The performance analysis, monitoring, and operational effectiveness are also described