Air Force Network migrations head to McConnell

  • Published
  • Air Force Network Integration Center Public Affairs
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. --  McConnell will become the next Air Mobility Command base to migrate its computer users into a "central" Air Force Network beginning Jan. 10, 2011.

A team from the 690th Network Support Group and 22nd Communication Squadron technicians will begin the migration at McConnell workstations over a four-week period.

The goal of this project is to collapse all individual, or stand-alone, Air Force, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard networks into the AFNet. To the majority of McConnell computer users, most of the changes will be transparent and should not cause any interruption to network access or normal day-to-day operations.

However, for the Air Force, this represents a major change to how computer networks are managed. Until now, major commands and various other Air Force organizations have been operating their own independent networks, consequently driving unique and unit specific requirements. Over the years, this "county option" approach led to standardization and security problems, high operation and maintenance costs and a lack of enterprise situational awareness. In short, there was no single organization or commander responsible for the network.

"The Air Force will now have a single commander in charge of the network with the capability to secure it," said Lt. Col. Robert Schroeter, 22nd Communications Squadron commander. "This assures our ability at McConnell to accomplish our missions for joint operations."

The migration will also yield a significant improvement in the Air Force's ability to fight daily virus activity and malicious intrusion attempts, and will centralize services including email and data storage, significantly improving network security and standardization. It will also reduce operational and training costs through the elimination of redundant systems and services.

The most visible change Airmen will notice is the format of their email addresses. The migration replaces the old first.last@McConnell.af.mil email address with a standard first.last@us.af.mil address.

The new addresses will remain with users for the duration of their career, employment or affiliation with the Air Force regardless of the base or organization assigned. As more bases join the AFNet, Airmen will be able to login to their accounts from any AFNet base without requesting and creating an additional account.