EUChinaGRID

Started on 1st January 2006, EUChinaGRID [http://www.euchinagrid.eu] is an initiative funded by European Commission in the framework of FP6. The project aims at integrating the major Grid infrastructures in Europe (EGEE) and China (CNGrid) for the benefits of eScience applications. The project is supporting the implementation of an intercontinental pilot infrastructure, using in a first place EGEE-supported applications in order to validate and promote the infrastructure, then facilitating the migration of new ones on the European and Chinese infrastructures. EUChinaGRID’s first results were therefore to facilitate scientific data transfer and processing: pilot Physics, Astrophysics and Biology applications are already exploiting the new infrastructure, while helping in validating it.A major challenge for the project is interoperability between European and Chinese middleware: reaching it, EUChinaGRID will provide the International scientific community a transparent access to a set of resources much greater than separately available in each environment. After a year and half of activity, a first version of the gateway between the infrastructures is already available.Another relevant work item of EUChinaGRID is the study of IPv6 compliance of Grid services and middleware: currently the IPv6 protocol is not widely used in this kind of applications. Nevertheless, Grids could take advantage of the larger address space and the extension header structure, which can be used to improve software capabilities. Furthermore, IPv6 is already heavily used in China, and should be therefore taken into account when pursuing a real interoperability between European and Chinese e-Infrastructures.