Nato Tacoms

Nations required to participate in coalition peacekeeping and warfighting operations all have different national communications systems with different capabilities and plans for upgrade. Currently, these differences are addressed by implementation of gateways between national network elements. To transform to a truly NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC), however, this limited gateway concept is insufficient due to the repertoire of user and network services that is needed and the dynamic nature of network-centric operations requiring rapid reconfiguration of networks without service interruption. The TACOMS network architecture provides a secure coalition information-sharing domain with a common set of standardized interfaces that allow national elements to be implemented using their own choice of technology. In this technology-independent approach, standardization is focused on functionality of the interoperability points (IOPs), and on the performance of the network elements that make up an integrated system. The protocol stack is defined for the points where networks built by different nations connect together