Jason M. Zurawski

The Science DMZ: a network design pattern for data-intensive science

The ever-increasing scale of scientific data has become a significant challenge for researchers that rely on networks to interact with remote computing systems and transfer results to collaborators worldwide. Despite the availability of high-capacity connections, scientists struggle with inadequate cyberinfrastructure that cripples data transfer performance, and impedes scientific progress. The Science DMZ paradigm comprises a proven set of network design patterns that collectively address these problems for scientists. We explain the Science DMZ model, including network architecture, system configuration, cybersecurity, and performance tools, that creates an optimized network environment for science. We describe use cases from universities, supercomputing centers and research laboratories, highlighting the effectiveness of the Science DMZ model in diverse operational settings. In all, the Science DMZ model is a solid platform that supports any science workflow, and flexibly accommodates emerging network technologies. As a result, the Science DMZ vastly improves collaboration, accelerating scientific discovery.

Fault-tolerant bandwidth reservation strategies for data transfers in high-performance networks

Many next-generation e-science applications require fast and reliable transfer of large volumes of data with guaranteed performance, which is typically enabled by the bandwidth reservation service in high-performance networks. One prominent issue in such network environments with large footprints is that node and link failures are inevitable, hence potentially degrading the quality of data transfer. We consider two generic types of bandwidth reservation requests (BRRs) concerning data transfer reliability: (i) to achieve the highest data transfer reliability under a given data transfer deadline, and (ii) to achieve the earliest data transfer completion time while satisfying a given data transfer reliability requirement. We propose two periodic bandwidth reservation algorithms with rigorous optimality proofs to optimize the scheduling of individual BRRs within BRR batches. The efficacy of the proposed algorithms is illustrated through extensive simulations in comparison with scheduling algorithms widely adopted in production networks in terms of various performance metrics.

Monitoring and troubleshooting multi-domain networks using measurement federations: Part 2 [Guest Editorial]

In both the scientific and corporate worlds, users, resources, and data are often physically distributed, making networks increasingly important for all operations. Enormous progress has been made in increasing the capacity and accessibility of networking infrastructures, which in turn has fostered wider adoption of cloud and grid environments. Unfortunately, these advances have not directly translated into improved performance for all applications and users; instead, network performance problems become even more subtle and detrimental as the capacity of the network increases, and troubleshooting them on multidomain network paths is highly challenging. These problems may be as benign as congestion from other network users, or as serious as packet loss caused by one or more intermediate domain infrastructure(s) and architectural flaws.

Separating the Devil from the Diabolos: A Fresh Reading of Wisdom of Solomon 2.24:

The typical English translation of Wisdom of Solomon 2.24 reads: ‘But through the devils envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it’ (nrsv). Most scholarship on the passage has taken for granted the devils place in this text and has understood this verse as one of the first references to the devil as the serpent of the Genesis 3 narrative. Unfortunately, this has given the devil a place in a text where he does not belong. Through philological and textual analyses, this article seeks to give a reading of Wis. 2.24 that is both more congruent to the Greek text and more consistent with the overall worldview of the author. This reading will help to foster greater understanding of such fundamental aspects of this texts ideology as theodicy, soteriology, and its overall conceptions of life and death.

Embodying the Ways in Christ: Paul’s Teaching of the Nations

Paul is remembered as a teacher of the nations (διδάσκαλος ἐθνῶν) in 1 Tim 2:7, a role, even if it were fictional, which could obviously be envisaged by second generation Christ-followers. It indicates that aspects of Paul’s activities were considered educational, and although the term παιδεία is absent from his undisputed letters, and other specifically educational terms like διδάσκαλος, διδαχή, μανθάνω, are rare, there are indeed numerous passages where Paul can be seen as engaged in a teaching-learning discourse and as actually teaching his addressees, since they have to “learn to be a gentile in Christ.”1 This teaching-learning discourse in the Pauline letters sheds fascinating light on the process of cultural translation in the earliest Christ-following groups from the nations. It is an aspect of high significance in my view when the notion of “Hellenism” is not envisaged as some uniform melting pot but rather as a label for a period during which Jews, Greeks, Romans, and other peoples and their respective traditions were in contact and interacted with each other in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, an interaction facilitated through the use of Greek as a lingua franca. The diverse traditions were not only linguistically different, but encompassed diverse practices and were embodied at numerous levels of social interaction.2 Thus, the Pauline letters provide glimpses of a teaching, a learning process between people who had been socialized partly in diverse, partly in shared, cultural, social, and linguistic traditions. Paul and his colleagues were deeply steeped in Jewish tradition, some expressed in Greek, some in other languages. The addressees were embedded in Greek, Galatian, Roman, and possibly a number

Students of God in the House of Torah: Education in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Elias Bickerman called the Hellenistic period “the Age of Education.”1 The Torah came to prominence in this era as a written book that became the basis of the education of the Jewish people, he argued, in part as a response to Homer, the central text of Greek paideia.2 The full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls provides a valuable new vantage point to understand Jewish education during the late Second Temple period. They do not demonstrate that Jews turned to the Torah to oppose Homer. The scrolls provide no indication of a pervasive opposition to Hellenism. The scrolls also do not support the view, attested in rabbinic literature, that by the first century BCE there were institutionalized schools, including at the level of primary education, throughout Israel.3 The scrolls do, however, affirm the centrality of authoritative writings for Jewish pedagogy, as Bickerman stressed, and show that their study and interpretation were not restricted to a priestly elite.

Mosaic Paideia: The Law of Moses within Philo of Alexandria’s Model of Jewish Education

Paideia is one of Philo’s most consistent preoccupations. It was so thoroughly foundational for the Alexandrian that he built it into nearly every aspect of his philosophy and worldview. Paideia was the tool needed to acquire virtue and wisdom, eradicate the passions, become an ideal citizen of the world, and secure the immortal life of the soul. The following explores the role of the Mosaic law within Philo’s overall theory of education, looking at what made the law such a unique pedagogical resource, how it functioned at various levels of education, what its relationship was to the other forms of education Philo deemed necessary—the curriculum of encyclical paideia and the study of philosophy—and, ultimately, what Philo’s idealized vision of Jewish education can tell us about his deeper concerns for his fellow Alexandrian Jews and his understanding of Jewish identity in the Mediterranean diaspora.

Testing the Feasibility of a Low-Cost Network Performance Measurement Infrastructure

Author(s): Chevalier, Scott; Schopf, Jennifer, M.; Miller, Kenneth; Zurawski, Jason | Abstract: Todays science collaborations depend on reliable, high performance networks, but monitoring the end-to-end performance of a network can be costly and difficult. The most accurate approaches involve using measurement equipment in many locations, which can be both expensive and difficult to manage due to immobile or complicated assets. The perfSONAR framework facilitates network measurement making management of the tests more reasonable. Traditional deployments have used over-provisioned servers, which can be expensive to deploy and maintain. As scientific network uses proliferate, there is a desire to instrument more facets of a network to better understand trends. This work explores low cost alternatives to assist with network measurement. Benefits include the ability to deploy more resources quickly, and reduced capital and operating expenditures. We present candidate platforms and a testing scenario that evaluated the relative merits of four types of small form factor equipment to deliver accurate performance measurements.