NetOps evolves from staff, Warfighter, Signal Center support

Army Communicator,  Fall, 2006  by Josh Davidson

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The transformation of Network Operations to its most recent suite involved a careful process, which included feedback from the system's staff, the Soldiers who used it and ultimately the United States Army Signal Center.

The package, called JNN NetOps 5-7, underwent further testing during the Army Battle Command & Enabler System of Systems test, which was held at Fort Irwin, Calif.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Monmouth, N.J., and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, from May 22 to June 10, 2006.

NetOps is used to maintain and troubleshoot the Army's Joint Network Node-Network. JNN-N is a converged tactical communications network providing voice, data and video capability to connect the battalion level Warfighter to areas throughout the world at the quick halt. It's the only network that brings Internet capabilities to the battlefield.

NetOps is used for configuration, along with determining network device fault status and performance link status mainly in terms of bandwidth, said Paul McCabe, lead engineer for JNN NetOps. JNN NetOps 5-7 was a reaction to the feedback of the 10th Mountain Division, 4th Infantry Division and 101st Airborne Division, he said. The systems' predecessor, JNN NetOps 2-4 was fielded to each of those divisions, whose Soldiers developed ideas of what would be needed in an upgrade, he said. The Signal Center made the final determination of which capabilities were necessary for JNN NetOps 5-7, he said.

Normally, it is the Signal Center's role to document a unit's concerns about a system and turn them into cohesive requirements, McCabe said. The Signal Center also supplies a Product Manager with recommendations based on user feedback, he said.

"They are the voice of the Soldier ultimately in terms of what should be fielded," he said.

In the case of upgrading to JNN NetOps 5-7, the Signal Center determined that it was most necessary to add network configuration management, help desk and trouble ticketing capabilities, he said. Desktop remediation such as patch management and anti-virus features were also included.

"We (NetOps) did an evaluation of commercial products, basically compared them to the requirements the Signal Center generated and developed a solution that best fit our needs," he said.

The NetOps staff also took an active role in working with users during the upgrade. After the NetOps 2-4 fielding, its staff went to the field to obtain feedback and interact with users, he said.

"It's what we called 'over-the-shoulder' training," McCabe said. "We interacted with the Division, brigade and sometimes the battalion users and, of course, the Signal Center was there, as well."

As software development continued, Signal Center personnel appeared at many of the events that the NetOps staff attended, he said.

The Signal Center was effective in taking feedback and putting together a "gap analysis" between JNN NetOps 2-4 and JNN NetOps 5-7, he said.

Since the request of one specific unit might not be something that all 10 Divisions need, the Signal Center decides what is needed by the entire Army, he said.

The ultimate objective of the NetOps cell is to ensure users are getting what they need from the network, he said.

NetOps provides its userS with tools to quickly restore their connection to the network. For example, the system has the capability to save network device configurations. Should the network fail, its user can compare the configurations of the functioning and non-functioning server and find out who made the change which caused it to fail, McCabe said. The user can also reestablish the saved configuration of the functioning server for the network.

"The fact that NetOps is a collection of tools, brings forth some challenges to its user," McCabe said. "Because it's a collection of tools, the extent to how successful we are depends on how well the users are trained."

NetOps is provided to Soldiers at the division, brigade and battalion levels. Soldiers at separate levels have different skill sets, he said. However, the network management tools they use, must be the same in order to incorporate modularity.

In the future, the goal will not be to add many more tools to the present NetOps. Instead, it will be to utilize more of the capabilities of the NetOps tools that already exist, McCabe said.

Josh Davidson of Symbolic Systems, Inc. is a news writer supporting the Program Executive Office, Command, Control, Communications Tactical Chief Information Office in Fort Monmouth, N.J. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism/Professional Writing from the College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State College). He has written articles for many other publications.

ACRONYM QUICKSCAN

ABC&E SoS--Army Battle Command and Enabler System of Sytems

ABCESS--Army Battle Command & Enabler System of Systems

JNN-Network--Joint Network Node-Network

NetOps--Network Operations

COPYRIGHT 2006 U.S. Army Signal Center
COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group