RCE 100: Fasterdata
Channel: Research Computing and Engineering
Date: 2021-01-29

Recorded 6/2015
https://www.rce-cast.com/Podcast/rce-100-fasterdata.html


Brock Palen and Jeff Squyres speak with Eli Dart about the Fasterdata effort to document ways to make better use of networks for scientific uses.

The Fasterdata Knowledge Base provides proven, operationally sound methods for troubleshooting and solving performance issues. For over 25 years, ESnet has operated an advanced research network with the goal of enabling the highest levels of performance for the Department of Energy (DOE) scientific community. During this time, our engineers have identified a common set of issues that hinder performance and we would like to share our experiences and findings in this knowledge base.

Eli Dart is a network engineer in the ESnet Science Engagement Group, which seeks to use advanced networking to improve scientific productivity and science outcomes for the DOE science facilities, their users, and their collaborators. Eli is a primary advocate for the Science DMZ design pattern, and works with facilities, laboratories, universities, science collaborations, and science programs to deploy data-intensive science infrastructure based on the Science DMZ model. Eli also runs the ESnet network requirements program, which collects, synthesizes, and aggregates the networking needs of the science programs ESnet serves.

Eli has over 15 years of experience in network architecture, design, engineering, performance, and security in scientific and research environments. His primary professional interests are high-performance architectures and effective operational models for networks that support scientific missions, and building collaborations to bring about the effective use of high-performance networks by science projects.

As a member of ESnet's Network Engineering Group, Eli was a primary contributor to the design and deployment of two iterations of the ESnet backbone network - ESnet4 and ESnet5. Prior to ESnet Eli was a lead network engineer at NERSC, DOE's primary supercomputing facility, where he co-led a complete redesign and several years of successful operation of the high-performance network infrastructure there. In addition, Eli spent 14 years as a member of SCinet, the group of volunteers that builds and operates the network for the annual IEEE/ACM Supercomputing conference series, from 1997 through 2010. He served as Network Security Chair for SCinet for the 2000 and 2001 conferences and was a member of the SCinet routing group from 2001 through 2010. Eli holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the Oregon State University College of Engineering.