The academic participants are rooted in the scientific research community that works on computer networks (and not parallel processing). We will therefore mainly (but not only) publish our results within this community, where more awareness of Grids and their network aspects is clearly needed. This will give us better chances to attain the "snowball effect" that we are aiming at: our results will cause other network researchers to become interested in Grids, and they will eventually contribute to filling the gap that we identified. This process will be supported by the simulation models and "ns-2" network simulator code that we will develop in one of our work packages as well as workshops and panels at conferences that we will organise, ensuring that any related efforts remain connected to EC-GIN and that our snowball will roll across Europe, and not the USA, where strong efforts are always undertaken to enhance the Internet. With this project we lay the basis for future such research for a significant European contribution to the technical basis of the future Internet.

EC-GIN constitutes a new approach for Grid research. In consequence, many researchers will join our R&D efforts and develop new applications, services and products to the benefit of consumers, industries, or SMEs, which will strengthen the technological innovation and leadership process in Europe in the long run. Innovation generates knowledge and new technologies and production processes which result in innovative products and services. This will lead to economic growth implicated by employment and by the well-being of citizens, thereby contributing to the stabilisation of society and leveraging the economy of Europe.

It is very important to carry out the EC-GIN-Project on an International scale by collaboration between EU and China involving our network experts specialised in networking and Grid computing. EC-GIN would not be possible without the support from EU FP6 as the "critical mass" of researchers and the project output need to be reached in European and China level.

In China, software institution of China Academy of Science has developed network-oriented platform, Open network Computing Environment (ONCE). This platform consists of middleware such as OnceAS application servers, OnceMQ message passing middleware, OnceTK Task processing middleware, OnceDi data integration middleware, OncePI planning integration middleware, and information Portal (OncePortal). Those middleware approaches provide communication and information exchange platform, distributed computing, and resource sharing. It can benefit EC-GIN expansion of snowball effect applications.