An Environment Agnostic Architecture for the Identification and Modification of Network Datagrams

As the Navy moves towards a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) through initiatives such as Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES), the high-level control of network information will become ever more important. This need is especially pronounced when dealing with complex and interrelated data flows. With such highly distributed yet interconnected network nodes, the ability to identify and act upon messages or portions of messages that should be restricted, redirected, reformatted, or otherwise modified is extremely valuable. This document addresses these concerns by proposing a flexible and modular architecture to identify those datagrams which need some form of modification and to perform such modification in a generic user-specified way. The solution relies heavily on accepted web services standards and makes abundant use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) and related technologies and standards. In addition, the components of the architecture are able to integrate with a wide variety of hardware and software systems on multiple platforms as well as operate at the network level. Support for multiple network protocols with the ability to expand those supported will also be provided. The proposed solution is highly commercializable due to its adaptable design and multi-use capability.