Reservation-based quality of service (QoS) in an Airborne Network

This paper addresses the use of Resource ReSerVation Protocol-Aggregate (RSVP-AGG) at the tactical edge of the Air Force´s Airborne Network (AN). Since the AN tactical edge can have different types of stub-networks accessing the AN (i.e., non-IP based legacy networks like Link 16, DiffServ based networks and IntServ based net-works), RSVP-AGG offers a common access approach regardless of the differences in the networks using the AN. The paper presents a novel RSVP-AGG approach that has the advantage of decreasing the burden on the AN core links with limited bandwidth by reducing RSVP control traffic over the encrypted core. Also, the paper shows that RSVP-AGG (being a single reservation instead of multiple reservations) could be more resilient to link errors. Moreover, using RSVP-AGG over the AN core could open the door to consider the advantages of statistical multiplexing.