EC-GIN will work towards achieving the four major objectives above; along the way, a number of tangible outcomes will be produced. The four most significant ones are:

1)  Mathematical models for generating Grid-like traffic in network simulators, and Grid traffic generation code for the "ns-2" network simulator.

2)  Prototype implementations of network management enhancements for the Grid along with performance evaluation reports.

3) A well-focused implementation of key mechanisms developed in the project; this will take the form of an extension to an open source operating system such as Linux.

4)  Improved research collaborations between China and Europe in GRID computing.

EC-GIN identifies and fills a research gap; it will parallel previous efforts that were made in the domain of real-time multimedia applications, where many network enhancements have been proposed, standardised and deployed. The intention is not to replace a protocol such as TCP, but to enrich the TCP/IP protocol stack with new functionalities. While such enrichment has already taken place for multimedia applications, with protocols like RTP, RTCP, SIP and DCCP (among many others) that were added to the standard, no such enhancements exist for Grid applications – they will be developed in EC-GIN. The research gap and the step that will be taken in this project is illustrated in the following figure.