Design of a secure local network: thesis ...

Abstract

This research sponsored by the USAF's HQ ESC/AD develops a multilevel secure host-to-hose computer local area network. The design process is presented. The resulting network uses a ring topology with packetized point-to- point switching over fiber optics communication links. For transmission security, packets are source hot-to-destination host encrypted as well as encapsulated with link-to-link encryption. Message transmission is controlled with message acknowledgements and credits within a non-preemptive three priority class queue. A simplified version of the resulting network was validated by applying Jackson's Theorem. Additionally, the simplified view was modeled with a PASCAL simulation program executed on a 64K microcomputer. Unfortunately, the comparison of the simulation against the analytical results that were obtained using Jackson's Theorem was not possible due to problems modeling the network on the microcomputer. Follow-on work in the area of simulation is needed to successfully complete the simulation and compare results. (Author)