Deploying Internet services over a direct broadcast satellite network: challenges and opportunities in the Global Broadcast Service

The use of direct-broadcast communication satellites and low-profile, portable receive antennas is an effective means to provide communications to military forces in the field enabling access to a wide range of information sources. Supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the Battlefield Awareness and Data Dissemination (BADD) program, a team was assembled to develop and demonstrate network protocols for the Global Broadcast Service (GBS), a system under development and acquisition by the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC). GBS will provide broadcast video, voice, and data from stateside and other information sources to users in a theater of operations. This paper presents the evolving architecture of the GBS Internet and our team´s experience with implementing the access, routing, transport, and middleware protocols used in the GBS Internet