A Scalable Content-based Routing Service for Joint Battlespace Infosphere Applications

Phase I of this project established the feasibility of constructing a software-based content routing engine to handle information-intensive applications within the Air Force's Joint Battlespace Infosphere (JBI). Experimental results demonstrated that thisproof-of-concept implementation achieves wire-speed (i.e. 100 Mbps) delivery using off-the-shelf computer servers. Our results outperformed benchmarks published in the open literature, and specifically addressed the concern that information tagged usingthe eXtensible Markup Language (XML) may be unsuitable for real-time or time-critical processing. The system was able to handle military data within an Air Force context, demonstrating the utility of tagging for military environments.In Phase II, we will extend the prototype into a larger, high-speed, content routing network and to build an end-to-end information delivery system as a JBI implementation. The system will leverage production efforts in other projects while concentratingon the specific research and development issues for the JBI mission: the scalability and reliability of the system; its ability to operate over secured networks; and the presentation system for the end user. We will conduct a series of experiments tostress the capabilities of our approach within a set of operational scenarios. The lessons learned from these experiments will be used to propose a full DoD-wide deployment of the JBI/Semantic Web concept.