Intrigued by the growing role of networking as an instrument of discovery, Tiffany Trader of the online newsletter HPCwire recently interviewed ESnet Director Greg Bell about what it takes to operate DOE’s international network.
In the article, Greg talks about the range of expertise ESnet’s staff brings to the table — “the network engineers on call 24-7, a cybersecurity team, storage experts, data collection and data analysis activities, and efforts engaged in building out the network. There is a team of people who build software tools to help the network be less of a black box. Then there is another team focused just on science engagement, helping scientists make the best possible use of the network and raising expectations about the network capabilities.”
“We are trying to raise everyone’s expectations and let them know that networks can do much more than they could just a few years ago. In fact, the great vision that we have for networks is not only as a scientific instrument in their own right, but that they can glue together big scientific instruments like a particle accelerator or a light source and a computational facility, for example, a DOE supercomputer center. This enables a scenario where we can take data in real-time from the source and move it at high-speed over the network and process it in real-time at the supercomputer center so the scientists can get immediate feedback about the experimental parameters that they have chosen and then adjust them in real-time.”
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