Originally Posted On: https://blog.axellio.com/dod-address-5g-network-monitoring-needs

How DoD Can Address 5G Network Monitoring Needs

With its low latency and high speed, 5G wireless is fast becoming the norm. The wireless vendor Ericsson predicts that 5G will carry 75 percent of mobile data traffic by 2029.

The U.S. military is leaning towards the use of 5G in its private networks for all the right reasons. In support of mission-critical communications, 5G (and emerging 6G) protocols offer transmission speeds up to 100 times faster than 4G LTE, up to 20 gigabits per second (Gbps) for 5G; low latency for faster delivery of time-sensitive data; and the capacity to enable thousands of devices to share data across a single network.

The DoD says 5G will “strengthen our Nation’s warfighting capabilities” with its ability to operate in congested and contested spectrum.”

But there’s a challenge here. Whether the DoD’s private networks are being managed by service members, civilians, or contractors — with or without support from private-sector service providers — new tools will be needed to ensure effective management of packet data within the 5G environment.

Before we look at that question, let’s consider where and how the military will use 5G.

Emerging Use Cases

In pursuit of 5G, the DoD already has established a cross-functional team to accelerate the adoption of this and future-generation wireless technologies. And to bring that to life, the Pentagon has announced $600 million for 5G experimentation and testing.

Those efforts give a sense of the ways in which 5G will elevate mission effectiveness in the future:

• AR/VR – At Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), Wash. a test bed is experimenting with 5G-enabled Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) for mission planning, distributed training, and operational use.
• Smart Warehouse – Naval Base San Diego (NBSD), Calif. is developing a 5G-enabled “Smart Warehouse” focused on increasing the efficiency and fidelity of naval logistic operations.
• Distributed Command and Control – A testbed at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. shows how 5G will aid in Air, Space, and Cyberspace lethality, while enhancing command and control (C2) survivability.
• Real-time, actionable information – Engineers from Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Army recently demonstrated a “flying 5G network,” with base stations installed on multi-copters, as a means to delivering real-time, actionable information to improve aircraft readiness and reduce costs.
• Warfighter support: On page 6 of a memorandum on Healthy Defense Communities, the Deputy Secretary of Defense describes how 5G on military installations will help to support warfighters. Because it can handle “massive amounts of data in near real-time,” the memo notes, this digital infrastructure will “allow Service members and families to access virtual healthcare, remote work and education, smart home technologies, and a range of lifestyle-enhancing applications and services.”

All these efforts point to the rapid adoption of 5G in support of a range of critical mission needs. This in turn creates a new requirement: With all that data moving through the network, military planners will need a more effective means of network and infrastructure monitoring.

Toward Modernized Monitoring

The DoD will experience an explosion in packet data with 5G, which is designed to manage 1000X higher data volumes than 4G, Ericsson reports. Network monitoring will be of vital importance as military networks take on higher bandwidth and higher data rates, along with a more virtualized, software-defined environment.

From a military perspective, effective network operations are increasingly important, with timely delivery of data on the network a key support of battlefield effectiveness. With the growing amount of packet data usage, the DoD will need to go beyond conventional monitoring capabilities, with a modernized solution that enables it to capture, store, analyze, and distribute all network traffic.

That level of network monitoring must support the ability to scale to emerging needs, such as high-speed capture and recording, and adaptive traffic distribution to avoid analysis overload. Ideally, the DoD should look to a high-speed software-based solution delivered on common off-the-shelf hardware with open, standards-based software APIs — one that offers direct access to packet data for any event and can be readily integrated into current network-management workflows.

For those looking to support 5G and the coming of 6G on military networks — whether they are service providers, military personnel, or contractors — Axellio’s PacketXpress offers a way forward. It can capture and manage extensive packet data, allowing network managers to improve troubleshooting; elevate network performance; and improve the accuracy and depth of their cyber- and network-security analyses at high speeds (many hundreds of Gbps).

As the military prepares for 6G and the next wave of wireless technology, PacketXpress can help monitor these mission-critical environments, including the network security applications that are integral to encryption delivery, with a focus on virtualization for software-based deployment and operation.

PacketXpress can also perform networking slicing, an important capability within 5G. Logical, software-based partitions within a virtualized environment, network slices support traffic management with segregation and prioritization, optimizing traffic flows for the military’s mission-critical, latency-sensitive applications.

With PacketXpress, capabilities such as traffic filtering, deduplication, encryption and decryption, compression, and packet slicing allow for selective traffic capture as necessary, while time-stamping every packet with nano-second accuracy.

With 5G pushing speeds of 20 Gbps, and 6G expected to take that as high as 1 terabyte per second or 8,000 Gbps, PacketXpress’s multi-100G capability can support not just current but also future needs.

With modernized network monitoring in support of more effective network management, DoD can capitalize on the promise of 5G. In support of optimal mission impacts, it can deliver high volumes of data at high velocity across the warfighting landscape.