Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington VA 22203-1714

A -- ACTIVE AND HIGH CONFIDENCE NETWORKS SOL BAA97-04 DUE 021397 POC Hilarie Orman, DARPA/ITO, FAX: (703) 522-7161. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting proposals for research and new technology development aimed at making major innovations in the design, security, and management of computer networks. I.) ACTIVE NETWORKS. Proposals are solicited addressing the development of active networks, a new generation of networks based on a software-intensive network architecture. This new networking platform must be flexible and extensible at runtime to accommodate the rapid evolution and deployment of networking technologies and also to provide the increasingly sophisticated services demanded by defense applications. The active nets architecture must be based on a highly dynamic runtime environment that supports a finely tuned degree of control over network services. The packet itself must be the basis for describing, provisioning, or tailoring resources to achieve the delivery and management requirements. Research proposals should address a general and flexible architecture for achieving these goals, such as one in which each network node's software environment can be accessed and/or modified by the message units moving through it. An active network will be able to evolve by accommodating the injection of newly designed services as and when required, thereby reducing the time needed to deploy new strategies or to tailor the infrastructure to immediate needs. Research is solicited for the design and development ofarchitectures and mechanisms that support such evolution and also allow a broad spectrum of services to be integrated and a multiplicity of network behaviors to be supported through the ''virtualization'' of the underlying infrastructure. Other crucial research topics include routing, resource allocation and network management services built with active network concepts.The designs should allow security, reliability, availability and quality of service to be tuned at multiple levels of granularity and under a wide range of conditions. The third section of this announcement describes closely related research topics in large-scale network engineering and management. The active networks environment poses unique security challenges, and research that leads to ''case hardening'' of the network through well-founded methods is highly encouraged. Both static and runtime methods are sought for assuring that the system satisfies the global and local policy constraints that constitute the basis for its security claims. Availability and dependability should be included as important security attributes of the network. Research is also sought for providing essential authentication and access control services in the network node environment and for providing security services as an integral and visible element of the active network. The detailed research topic groupings in this area are further elaborated in the Proposer Information Pamphlet, which is organized as follows: enhanced networking services built from composable elements, network node architectures that can be adapted to rapidly changing requirements, adapting the network to meet quality of service guarantees, and demonstrations of demanding end system protocols and applications that utilize the unique facilities of the active nets architecture. II.) HIGH CONFIDENCE NETWORKS. DoD distributed systems must have a high degree of security and availability for accessing remote resources, and this implies the need for networks that are highly responsive, secure, and resilient. Users of these networks require a high confidence level in the network's ability to maximize its service utility under adverse circumstances, including attacks on the infrastructure itself. Therefore, networks must have the ability to provide the degree of security required by user applications, a high resistance to attack, and the ability to manage security parameters dynamically. The secure operation of large-scale defense computer networks and their services is the goal of this research area, which will develop the technology for the secure network infrastructure that can sustain high levels of assurance even in the face of determined attack. Such an infrastructure must be easily managed and related to user requirements with a high degree of fidelity. The research issues emphasized in the High Confidence Networking program are management of security quality of service, protocols that can manage security services in conjunction with other quality of service guarantees, and runtime management and adaptation techniques that enable both recovery from attacks and continuous operation with near optimal use of diminished resources. The Proposer Information Pamphlet expands on these topics. The third section of this announcement describes closely related research topics in large-scale network engineering and management. III.) NETWORK ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT. Research is sought for developing scalable engineering and analysis techniques for designing, modeling, and managing very large, highly interconnected and heterogeneous networks. The goal of this work is to replace current methods for engineering large systems of networks, because such methods cannot cope with the rapid growth rate in networks, network technologies, network components (switches, routers, etc.), and end hosts. The research must lead to techniques that realistically scale to the dimensions of the global information infrastructure and beyond. Techniques for modeling, simulating, and collecting and analyzing data are sought. Also sought are methods for using the products of these techniques to manage huge networks to assure availability, performance, quality of service, and other related metrics. The concepts of active networks, high confidence networks, and the prototype system of systems (see the Proposer Information Pamphlet) may be used as enabling technologies for this work, research that clearly supports such technologies is encouraged as well. Proposals for studies of promising techniques will be considered, as will proposals for prototyping and developing the software and computing environment for carrying out engineering studies and management demonstrations of complex network systems. For all three research areas, teaming is strongly encouraged, both for development and for demonstrating the technology in advanced testbed networks. GENERAL INFORMATION: In order to minimize unnecessary effort in proposal preparation and review, proposers are strongly encouraged to submit brief proposal abstracts in advance of full proposals. An original and six (6) copies of the proposal abstract must be submitted to DARPA/ITO, ATTN: BAA 97-04, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714, on or before 4:00 PM (ET), Thursday, December 12, 1996, to guarantee review. An original and six (6) copies of each proposal must be submitted to the administrative address for this BAA by 4:00 PM (ET) Thursday, February 13, 1997 in order to be considered. Proposers must obtain a pamphlet, BAA 97-04 Proposer Information, which provides further information on the areas of interest, submission, evaluation, funding processes, proposal abstracts, and full proposal formats. This pamphlet may be obtained by fax, electronic mail, or mail request to the administrative contact address given below, as well as at URL address http://www.ito.darpa.mil/Solicitations.html. Proposals not meeting the format described in the pamphlet may not be reviewed. This Commerce Business Daily notice, in conjunction with the pamphlet BAA 97-04 Proposer Information, constitutes the total BAA. No additional information is available, nor will a formal RFP or other solicitation regarding this announcement be issued.Requests for same will be disregarded. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the proposals received. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal which shall be considered by DARPA. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Institutions (MI) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of information security research for exclusive competition among these entities. Evaluation of proposals will be accomplished through a scientific review of each proposal using the following criteria, which are listed in descending order of relative importance: (1)overall scientific and technical merit, (2) potential contribution and relevance to DARPA mission, (3) offeror's capabilities and related experience, (4) plans and capability to accomplish technology transition, and (5) cost realism. All administrative correspondence and questions on this solicitation, including requests for information on how to submit a proposal abstract or proposal to this BAA, must be directed to one of the administrative addresses below by 4:00 PM, February 6, 1997, e-mail or fax is preferred. DARPA intends to use electronic mail and fax for some of the correspondence regarding BAA 97-04. Proposals and proposal abstracts may not be submitted by fax, any so sent will be disregarded. The administrative addresses for this BAA are: Fax:703-522-7161 Addressed to: DARPA/ITO, BAA 97-04, Electronic Mail:baa9704@darpa.mil, Electronic File Retrieval: http://www.ito.darpa.mil/Solicitations.html, Mail: DARPA/ITO, ATTN: BAA 97-04, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive Arlington, VA 22203-1714. (0292)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0001 19961021\A-0001.SOL)