New Precedence Features for the Government User in the Public Switched Network

A purpose of the Defense Switched Network project is to investigate means of providing government communications systems capable of serving Department of Defense administrative and Command and Control (C²) traffic. This includes the absorption of current AUTOVON traffic. The government customer has a number of unique requirements not reflected in current commercial offerings. One such requirement is precedence treatment for a subset of government users. In times of national emergency, precedence government users require essentially nonblocking service with minimal delay. Queuing, additional route access, and exemption from network management controls are capable of providing this grade of service to the precedence user on the public network with minimal impact on public service. This paper describes these network management techniques and analytically evaluates their effectiveness.