Performance in simulation games in which the players are removed from each other is mainly challenged by network response. Moving personnel from place to place for training is not an option nowadays and, therefore, Live, Virtual, Constructive (LVC) simulation systems must support distributed operations. Even though high-speed networks are becoming more available, the reality is that, in some countries, they are still limited to certain areas and costs are elevated. Moreover, high speed links are usually commercial but, for military usage, for security reasons, point-to-point private networks are preferred. While optimizing the workload is a possible solution, as simulation systems evolve they demand more and more bandwidth.

Military networks usually provide robust communications, based on low speed but highly redundant links. In such a setup, there are many network paths connecting two endpoints. By exploiting this multipath capacity, the overall network speed can be dramatically increased. This strategy is the one utilized by most peer-to-peer (P2P) systems to share files over the Internet, such as BitTorrent or Gnutella. This decentralized collaborative design, however, is ill-suited for transmitting short messages. Based on that same principle, Sun Microsystems Juxtapose (JXTA) offers reliable packet delivery using highly-resilient, multipath networks optimized for short message exchange, making this approach more convenient to use during simulation games.

This paper reports on the outcomes of the Overlay Distribution Network (ODiN) Project, which integrates JXTA technology to an already running constructive simulation system deployed over a Wide Area Network. The architecture and the technical details of the actual implementation of ODiN are described and the results of executed tests are shown. Said tests reveal a significant optimization of network usage, efficiently exploiting available links and avoiding bottlenecks.