Protecting Premium Traffic in Colorless Core Backbone: Test Results

End-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) in tactical military networks is crucial in order to protect premium traffic from non-premium traffic. Such networks will typically consist of end users on LANs at multiple security levels ("red" side) connecting to one common "colorless" or "black" backbone (WAN) via in-line network encryption (INE) devices. Having a colorless backbone simplifies network engineering and management burdens in otherwise having to maintain separate network architectures and insuring information does not flow between them. However, providing guaranteed QoS in such networks is not trivial due to policy restrictions which limit information sharing across INE devices. It is therefore assumed that vital information on the WAN side (such as topology and link bandwidth data), cannot be made known to the LAN side, where end-users reside. Our solution consists of dynamic queue management techniques in the colorless core network, working in conjunction with red-side admission control and preemption techniques, without violating security policy. In this paper we present results of testing the proposed solution. The testing was done in an environment consisting of LAN and WAN routers, surrogate INEs, red-side admission /preemption controller, and our black-side queue management software platforms. Results presented show improvements in protecting premium traffic in terms of throughput, packet loss and jitter, as compared to static queue management techniques. The queue management technique, of which its testing is described here, has been implemented under the PILSNER program at US Army, CERDEC, S&TCD, Fort Monmouth, NJ.