Sean M Patrick

More Bandwidth Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means: Why the Air Force Cannot Utilize the Full Potential of Its Enterprise Information Technology Systems Sean M Patrick

Publisher Marketing: Many corporations in America today have revolutionized the way they conduct business by using information technology (IT) to reduce operating costs. Multi-national corporations have standardized internal business applications such as electronic messaging, accounting, personnel and other applications so that all their employees worldwide use their corporate IT infrastructure and Web browsers to connect to corporate enterprise application servers. Currently, the U. S. Air Force (USAF) cannot implement this business practice effectively because it does not control the end-to-end quality of service (QoS) of its enterprise business applications. The reason is that USAF base networks (what would be called "campus" networks in industry) are not connected together by dedicated data links. Instead, a USAF computer user at one base who wishes to connect to a USAF server located at another base must use the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)-provided Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET) for its wide-area connectivity. From July 2000 until January 2002, the Air Staff undertook an effort to change the USAF unclassified network architecture to improve enterprise network performance and security. Unfortunately, this initiative was killed. Perhaps this paper might provide a catalyst to revive that effort.