Resources Management in Peer-to-Peer Mobile Ad Hoc Network Communications Environments

Tactical Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) offer exciting new capabilities for flexible, rapidly deployable peer-to-peer communications, and they require cutting-edge innovations to function. Network management is a particular challenge, because the MANETs that form the"last mile"of next-generation networks face unique constraints: highly dynamic topology, limited bandwidth, unpredictable connectivity. DataSoft"s solution is a MANET Management Protocol (MMP) that uses a distributed system of peer-to-peer software agents to aggregate and deliver network data. MMP agents self-organize to form a dynamic overlay network that enables scalable, resilient, secure, and decentralized delivery of network management information. The protocol is flexible enough to transport many types of data and support a wide spectrum of management tasks: resource availability measurement, status monitoring, network configuration management, asset inventory, etc. MMP is designed for secure operation and uses standard, COTS-supported protocols and interfaces. The overall goal of this SBIR is to create an improved management protocol for MANETs, including both a formal standard (e.g. IETF RFCs) and a working implementation. Phase II builds on our successful Phase I MMP prototype to develop a more mature version of the protocol running in a realistic environment, and demonstrate its feasibility in a tactical MANET.