Challenges in building scalable network centric real-time information dissemination systems

As the DoD strives for a new Network Centric Warfare (NCW) (Alberts et al., http://www.dodccrp.org) capability, a multitude of technical and organizational challenges are being faced. In large part, NCW can be classified as a collective large-scale information dissemination system that operates at multitudes of levels and will be implemented using different distributed technologies and architectural styles. This paper classifies the use of these different distributed technologies as layers of information abstractions and highlights their varied architectural uses as they are driven by latency, scalability, reconfiguration and seamless programming requirements. For example, the following technologies are contrasted: peer to peer and mobile networks, Web services, content-based routing, and real-time CORBA, while addressing distributed security and fault tolerance issues. Unique challenges for when and how these technologies can be used, as well as their attributes for addressing scalability are highlighted. These technology challenges are classified and contrasted using the models based on the Siena project (ICSE 99 Workshop, 1999), which has been extended for the real-time community and termed Siena+RT. These requirements are described in context of the Boeing Phantom Works (http://www.boeing.com/phantom) XIS (eXtensible InfoSphere) Scalability Testbed Framework. XIS is a set of hierarchal distributed technologies developed to support the diverse real-time requirements for collection and dissemination of information throughout a global information grid.