Formed in 1790, the U.S. Coast Guard is researching modern networking technologies with its Waterways Information Network project at its R&D center to help accomplish its many missions.

The United States Coast Guard is a multimission, maritime military organization. Best known for its traditions of search and rescue and lifesaving, it also has missions relating to maritime law enforcement, port security, and transportation safety. Founded in 1790 to protect against smuggling, enforce tariffs, and safeguard government revenue collections, this oldest of the U.S. military organizations traditionally served under the Department of Transportation in peacetime and the Department of Defense in wartime. It was recently put under the aegis of the newly created Department of Homeland Security.

Through it all, the Coast Guard has carried out its responsibilities in monitoring communications and ensuring safety in the large and diverse marine transportation sector. Over the past few years, it realized that a "clear and real need" existed "to improve information transfer in its Marine Transportation System (MTS)," according to a study the Guard undertook in this area. An overreliance on paper-based systems, diverse methods for submitting and transmitting information, and a lack of integration among various electronic information devices and systems were all issues the Coast Guard realized it needed to deal with.

Solution Built on Project JXTA Technology

In the wake of these findings, the Coast Guard Research & Development Center (CG RDC) is developing a communications infrastructure known as the Waterway Information Network (WIN) to serve government agencies, commercial maritime exchanges, and professional mariners. The CG RDC also anticipates a level of information access for the general public. The WIN is envisioned as a peer-to-peer communications network that serves various users in diverse communications scenarios, enables content management services, and is built to stand the test of time.

VistaPortal and Sun, using advanced Project JXTA technology, have teamed up to develop and deliver a solution for the CG RDC's WIN. By means of Project JXTA's ability to deliver flexible communications among diverse systems and devices, the WIN meets Coast Guard criteria of being "flexible enough to ensure that participating information resources are easily accessible, eliminate redundant data input where possible, and allow for rapid and organized information retrieval by all MTS user groups," according to a Coast Guard document on the WIN. The Coast Guard also requires that the WIN be enabled for future communications tools such as wireless Web devices and PDAs.

The WIN architecture provides for the exchange of Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents between participating groups, in several configurations, through a peer-to-peer network. The configurations include from the Coast Guard to the public and vice versa and from the Coast Guard to the MTS and vice versa. In order to maintain information integrity while working in real time for this decentralized community of users, the network must be secure.

The CG RDC also notes the possibility of communications among multiple parties concurrently. The many-to-many communications capability of a peer-to-peer architecture based on Project JXTA technology can "reduce both the need for multiple sources of the same information and reduce the overall dependence on any one information resource," according to the Coast Guard.

A long-standing networking description, the International Standards Organization's Open Systems Interconnect (ISO/OSI) model, has been useful in integrating up-to-date Project JXTA flexibility and peer-to-peer capability into the WIN architecture. ISO/OSI is a seven-layer model well known to network architects and managers as well as C-level IT executives.

The WIN addresses layers 4 and 5, "session" and "transport," which manage and package network traffic, taking data from lower basic transport protocols and preparing it for the user interface and application levels, where the users are. By working within these layers, the WIN architecture packages and delivers communications from diverse sources to the various peer-to-peer communications sessions that the WIN is required to serve.

The architecture also "provides the flexibility to develop and integrate new technologies in networking and new maritime applications without imposing unforeseen limitations imposed by architecture decisions made today," according to the Coast Guard. In addition, transport-layer security enables proper identification of users and servers to one another along the entire information network, critical for an organization such as the Coast Guard.

Finding the Most-Relevant Information

This flexibility comes from three basic peer-to-peer models, defined within the context of the WIN by the Coast Guard as "atomistic," "user-centered," and "data-centered." The atomistic model, in which a single data set on a single computer or local network is used by a single group, is the simplest of the three. It will most likely be found among government agencies that have already defined communications formats among themselves, according to the Coast Guard.

User-centered communication employs a user directory to facilitate "peer discovery" and is employed by people trying to reach specific maritime services. Data-centered communication "allows users to search and access data hosted on other peers in a distributed manner," according to the Coast Guard. This type of communication is "likely to be used by users to search for and obtain the most-relevant MTS information related to their situation."

The integration of XML, another well-known software technology, lets the WIN perform distributed content management. Tailored for maritime use into something called the Maritime Information Markup Language (MIML), it fits into the overall concept of enabling users on the network to access the information they need, wherever it exists, while maintaining data security and integrity.

Numerous examples within the Coast Guard and the MTS illustrate the need for effective content management. One example is that, without an effective peer-to-peer network such as the WIN, there is no seamless way to transfer all the command-and-control system information—such as charts, radar, and navigation data—needed by large Coast Guard cutter ships when they go to sea.

The WIN, enabled by Project JXTA technology, delivers these capabilities, as well as the diverse, often complex other communications requirements encountered daily by the Maritime Transportation System. It is an e-government program that benefits the Coast Guard, other government agencies, and the commercial maritime transportation sector as well.