IP over Satcom for Military Users

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) faces an ever increasing demand for wide area communications to support applications that run on a largely Microsoft infrastructure. Access is required ‘in theatre' where satcom is often the principal bearer. This presentation describes the collaboration of Microsoft, MoD, and QinetiQ on a joint programme to investigate improvements in the implementation of TCP/IP in Windows and baseline measurements of bandwidth utilisation in real and emulated satellite networks. Initial conclusions indicate improved performance and more efficient use of bandwidth in satcom through the configuration of current Windows versions (XP and Windows 2003) with further improvements ‘out of the box’ in the new Vista TCP/IP stack.