AFNet changes coming to Kadena

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Tara A. Williamson
  • 18th Wing Public Affairs
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --  Kadena's turn to switch to the Air Force Network is around the corner, with work scheduled to begin March 12 and continue through the end of April.

"The overall goal of AFNet is to consolidate all of the help desks into one location," said Tech. Sgt. Harold Becker, 18th Communications Squadron Comm Focal Point NCO in charge. These locations are called ESDs, or Enterprise Service Desks."

There will be three physical locations where these ESDs will reside; Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Lackland Air Force Base and Ramstein Air Base.

The main purpose for having the three physical ESDs is when customers call the Comm Focal Point number the calls will be forwarded to whichever ESD is operational. This means 24/7 service for users across the world.

"[AFNet is] trying to give the user a few more things they can do at their level before they have to call the Comm Squadron," Becker said. "The user will be able to do password resetting, update the global, install their own printers and load approved software applications."

Issues that will be handled at the ESD level are logging in, quarantined computers, lack of connections, software issues and computer patches.

Also, if the user has a network related issue, it will now be dealt with at the ESD level.

"The ESD will generate the trouble ticket. They'll try to do some troubleshooting first and they'll reassign trouble tickets as needed," Becker said. "Then, if they can't do it, they'll send the ticket back to us to do touch maintenance on sight."

Overall, users themselves won't see a change other than their e-mail address. The e-mail address a user is given under the AFNet will be the e-mail they keep forever. Instead of the old first.last@kadena.af.mil, users will now have a standard first.last@us.af.mil address.

"When you initially come into the service, you will only get one e-mail address and it will stay the same wherever you go," said Master Sgt. Emerique Magyer, 18th CS client services section chief. "Whether you're here, home station, deployed, TDY or on leave, it's the same address."

To help remind users of the upcoming change as the date gets closer, the 18th CS will send out base-wide countdown reminder e-mails.

"A lot of good will come out of [this change]," Magyer said. "Permanent change of station will be a lot easier and when you deploy it'll be easier. In the long run it'll be more convenient to the user."