Tactical Network Configuration (NETCONF)

Tactical networks are critical to soldiers' ability to communicate and access applications. The configuration and operation of network devices needs to be simple, fast, and reliable. If too much complexity is exposed to equipment operators, they will need expensive training. More likely, they will be under-trained, which increases network mis-configuration and downtime. Standards-based automation tools can greatly reduce the complexity required for network management. The emerging NETCONF standard protocol can be optimized to meet the special needs of tactical networks. The goal of this research is to identify the specific gaps in the NETCONF protocol and architecture that limit its usefulness in tactical networks, explore a limited number of solution paths, and recommend a solution approach to close the gaps. Major improvements in transaction resiliency in slow and/or unstable network conditions can be achieved. Enhanced NETCONF and YANG can be used together to provide a solution platform for scalable configuration management performance in low-bandwidth networks with lots of NETCONF servers to manage. The NETCONF security model and server architecture can be enhanced to allow any component (e.g., identity management, user authentication, role-based access control) to be configurable and independent of the NETCONF server.