Defence technology and security firm QinetiQ, formerly
the research lab of the UK’s Defence Evaluation and Research
Agency, has selected Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances to boost
communications performance for the Royal Navy.
The project is part of the Ministry of Defence’s applied
research programme, which will feed into number of related
network-enabling projects, including the Defence Information
Infrastructure initiative, which will consolidate MoD information
systems.
The navy uses a mix of satellite, UHF (both wide and narrow band)
and HF bearers for its operational data communications, but has
found that performance can be poorer than a civilian dial-up
internet connection. The navy wanted its existing command support
systems to operate seamlessly with all its ships around the world,
using any potential network bearer.
Siôn Evans, senior network and systems consultant at QuinetiQ,
said a three and a half week sea trial had shown the Riverbed
appliance produced “at least a 3.5 times average performance
improvement across all Royal Navy Command Support System
applications in seven ships”.
Used with the specialist tactical picture application C2PC “the
improvements were up to 44 times”, Evans said.