Large scale computational science on federated international grids: The role of switched optical networks

The provision of high performance compute and data resources on a grid has often been the primary concern of grid resource providers, with the network links used to connect them only a secondary matter. Certain large scale distributed scientific simulations, especially ones which involve cross-site runs or interactive visualisation and steering capabilities, often require high quality of service, high bandwidth, low latency network interconnects between resources. In this paper, we describe three applications which require access to such network infrastructure, together with the middleware and policies needed to make them possible.