File:Ship-to-shore data communication and prioritization (IA shiptoshoredatco109456966).pdf - Wikimedia Commons

Allen, Phillip L

Gravseth, David P

Huffman, Michael Brett

Hughes, Richard W

May, Bradley J

Nguyen, Son N

Pinner, James W

Pontejos, Edgar C

Reinertson, Debra R

Roderick, Michael J.

Ships are plagued by connectivity issues while underway resulting in backlogs of data needing to get off a ship. This capstone project's main focus was to provide the Commanding Officer (CO) the capability to select and prioritize outgoing data flow from ship-to-shore dependent on their ship's operational situation while afloat. In carrying out this effort, the team focused its analysis on the Navy's Automated Digital Network System (ADNS) and Information Technology (IT) (i.e.

shipboard networks and applications) communities. In so doing, the As-Is technical status and current state of business processes were captured as a starting point for the work. The team learned that the shipboard IT infrastructure, ADNS in particular, has the technical capability to prioritize data but that functionality is difficult to use and not widely understood by shipboard operators. As a result, most prioritization efforts are done ashore (instead of on the ship) which, in turn, puts extra work load on shore activities. The ADNS community is striving to make improvements in its Quality of Service (QoS) (prioritization of network traffic) and this effort is well underway. Although the technical infrastructure seems to be in place, the functional (user perspective) aspect of ship-to-shore data prioritization does not seem to be well organized and formed. This is probably one of the main reasons why data prioritization seems to be performed in a stove-pipe, fragmented, and ad-hoc manner, and conducted ashore instead of on the ship. Thus, a framework providing a ship-to-shore data prioritization perspective from a systems point of view appears to be missing. This framework could bring the functional and technical aspects of data prioritization together. Although, the team initiated the formulation of this framework in several ways. First, the team developed and introduced a conceptual prioritization matrix which would allow the CO to select and prioritize outgoing data based on the ship's operational situation. Second, the translation of war fighter situations into policies which would feed into the network prioritization mechanism was explored. Third, a data and domain architecture in which to employ prioritization was developed. Finally, modeling and simulation of the network prioritization mechanism was conducted. It is recommended that the work that had been started in this project be continued and further developed by future Naval Postgraduate School masters and/or doctoral efforts.

Subjects: Automated Digital Network System (ADNS); Quality of Service (QoS); Network Prioritization