Accelerating Networks for National Security

We often don’t hear about crises that were avoided. Instead we hear of the problems and issues encountered by different jurisdictions in trying to communicate and organise themselves during a crisis, especially due to incompatible communication systems.Even with many related anti-terrorism responsibilities now consolidated under The Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination (ODESC)  in New Zealand, no one organisation can do the entire job of keeping us safe. It is critical of all ODESC government and non-government agencies to work together to manage the country’s wider counter-terrorism efforts smoothly and successfully.  For this to happen, communication needs to be faster, and coordination needs to be tighter, across all of these groups.Data communication forms an increasingly important part of this equation. If the Police Commissioner is alerted that a potential terrorist may try to enter the country, this information should be at the fingertips of key ODESC agencies. The suspect’s photo should pop up on a patrol car terminal almost as quickly as on a desktop computer at police headquarters.That would be the ideal scenario. Even assuming that all bureaucratic barriers to information sharing can be bypassed, there are technological hurdles to be overcome. The security agencies that need to work together may not all be located in the same building, jurisdiction, or in the same part of the country. Some may even be out at sea or in the air. And the data we want to share with them is increasingly rich – not just text, but video and biometrics.A DISTRIBUTED WORKFORCEToday the national security workforces operate beyond the reach of a high speed local area network (LAN). Many of the workforces are connected through a Wide Area Network (WAN) that reaches out to an office. Some work primarily from the road and rely on radio or mobile networks for data access. Or they may rely on satellite connections. Each of these modes of remote communication comes with its own challenges in the form of limited bandwidth, signal delays and network congestion.All communication barriers can be overcome, but this will require planning and attention.Here’s a scenario: You are a police officer and pull over someone whom you think may be on the watch list. The suspect hands over a fake ID. You try bringing it up on the police database, but the network database is extremely slow and frustrating. The fact that you’re connecting wirelessly might not even be the problem. The holdup could just as easily be on the wired backhaul between the nearest radio data node and the data center where these records are kept. The connection might be overloaded because several videoconferences and a big batch backup are competing for WAN capacity at the same time.You wouldn’t know what the problem is and you are losing your patience, getting frustrated and concerned about all the things that could go wrong while waiting for this valuable and critical piece of information.If the goal is to provide national security personnel with real-time access to intelligence, we need to think about how to speed things up. The speed of a networked application has a tremendous effect on how users perceive its usability, and ultimately on their ability to do their jobs. PERFORMANCE, WITHOUT DELAYTo solve a problem, you must first understand why it exists. Bandwidth is only one part. When the demand on the network exceeds its total capacity, something has got to give. Like a traffic jam on a congested highway, the network backs up as packets are dropped and have to be retransmitted. But adding bandwidth can be expensive, and it doesn’t solve the whole problem. The issue is not only how narrow the data highway is but how long it is.Many enterprise applications have been designed to work best on a LAN. Application protocols, and even base network protocols like TCP, look excessively "chatty” from the perspective of the WAN. They may send a flurry of messages back and forth just to establish a connection, before any data is transmitted, with another flurry of telemetry messages to follow that track the progress of an upload or download.The effect is insignificant on a LAN, where all this can be accomplished in milliseconds when network latency is negligible. But when stretched across hundreds of miles – or even to Earth orbit and back for a satellite connection – the delays introduced by this chatter become a significant burden on performance.This is one of the areas where WAN optimisation can help. WAN optimisation appliances can be positioned at either end of a WAN connection and used to simplify the network conversation at the protocol level, editing out unnecessary chatter. If configured for use with satellite connections, they may also take responsibility for transmitting a packet and sending back an acknowledgement – even though the packet has not in fact reached its destination. By "pre-empting” the acknowledgement, which otherwise might take several seconds, a satellite bandwidth optimiser prevents the sending application from waiting before it transmits the next block of data.Protocol simplification is used in conjunction with techniques for compressing and deduplicating data transmissions. The bandwidth required to transmit a file can often be reduced by 60 to 95 per cent by these techniques. Email traffic can be significantly reduced by the expedient of identifying duplicate content in those messages. For example, if a memo from the Police Commissioner is being distributed to all personnel, a WAN controller can transmit it once, then send only a compact reference to it with all subsequent copies. The WAN optimisation appliance at the other end of the connection then rebuilds the document – with the help of these references - back into the broadcast email for delivery to the ultimate recipient.Planning is required to make all these run efficiently, but WAN optimisation not only makes networks run faster, it frees up capacity to get more work done. With national security, that means the network works harder for the safety and security of the public and its servants.