ALSP developed and demonstrated key aspects of distributed simulation, many of which were applied in the development of HLA.
* No central node so that simulations can join and depart from the confederation at will
* Geographic distribution where simulators can be distributed to different geographic locations yet exercise in the same simulated environment
* Object ownership so each simulation controls its own resources, fires its own weapons and determines appropriate damage to its systems when fired upon
* A message-based protocol for distributing information from one simulation to all other simulations.
* Time management so that the times for all simulations appear the same to users and so that event causality is maintained – events should occur in the same sequence in all simulations.
* Data management permits all simulations to share information in a commonly understood manner even though each had its own representation of data. This includes multiple simulations controlling attributes of the same object.
* An architecture that permits simulations to continue to use their existing architectures while participating in an ALSP confederation.
