Application of Acceleration Technology to Military Sealift Command Afloat WAN Infrastructure

To enable Military Sealift Command (MSC) to accomplish its mission, a system for world-wide voice and data communications has been established. The infrastructure required to extend this system to the fleet is based on satellite RF technology. As the available military and commercial satellite-based RF communications system resources are both scarce and expensive, it is a constant challenge to supply the fleet with this scarce resource (bandwidth) in quantities sufficient to efficiently sustain operational requirements. The primary purpose for the application of accelerator technology is to ensure that available satellite bandwidth is utilized as efficiently and effectively as possible. Accelerator technology accomplishes this feat by condensing and converting the satellite-bound data stream, via caching/compression/protocol translation algorithms, before it reaches the satellite RF infrastructure. This paper first introduces the MSC satellite WAN infrastructure and then examines the development and implementation of the accelerator technology solution currently being deployed to the MSC fleet