1. A Brief Introduction
The Internet is the biggest change in human communications since the printing press. Whether you believe in revolutions or not, it is clearly that the impact of the rapidly growing global network is apparently in many aspects of our daily lives---at home and at work, in shops and banks, in schools, colleges and universities. Under the circumstances, many have come to realize the productivity of the research community will be greatly increased if they have access to high-speed networks with advanced capabilities. A program thus begins on developing network for science and research in many countries.
In October 1996, the US government announced its plan of establishing Next Generation Internet (NGI) for supporting the advanced applications in universities and scientific researches. In May 1997, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced its program for High Performance International Internet Services (HPIIS), providing the basis for the development of next generation applications supporting international collaborations and enabling interaction with global information and experimental resources. In July 1999, Russian Backbone Network (Rbnet) began to connect with the US NGI, thus established the framework of Naukanet. With the more frequent communications between the research communities in China, America and Russia, the three countries all feel necessary to set up worldwide high-speed network. 
In 2002, CAS, NSF and the Consortium of Russian Ministries and Science Organizations jointly proposed to establish a new global ring network for advanced applications development (GLORIAD), marking a milestone in scientific collaborations of the three countries.
GLORIAD is based on the Russia-US NaukaNet program, with two links added between China and the above two countries. These new links will enable the research institutes in the US to communicate with the Russian scientific organizations through the network of CAS.
GLORIAD is proposed to be a 10-gigabit-per-second optical network around the entire northern hemisphere. The Ring "begins" in Chicago at the NSF-supported StarLight facility, and then crosses the Atlantic Ocean to the NetherLight facility in Amsterdam from which it continues to Moscow and the Russian science city of Novosibirsk, across Siberia to the border of PRC. From there the network continues to Beijing, then Hong Kong and crosses the Pacific Ocean to complete the ring in Chicago. The new network will provide both increased reliability and flexibility for researchers as they address issues for joint scientific and educational projects. The China-US-Russian GLORIAD Grand Opening Ceremony will be held on January 12th, 2004.

2. Goals of GLORIAD
Linking scientific communities in PRC, the US and Russia with an advanced S&E network and Grid-based services, the multi-national GLORIAD program will
actively encourage and coordinate applications across multiple disciplines and provide for sharing such scientific resources as databases, instrumentation, computational services, software, etc. In addition to supporting active scientific exchange with network services, the program will provide a test bed for advancing the state-of-the-art in collaborative and network technologies ? including Grid-based applications, optical network switching, an IPv6 backbone, network traffic engineering and network security.

Specifically speaking---
---Construct and develop infrastructures for network transmission.
---Develop and research on network management, utilization, monitoring, resource allocation and scheduling tools.
---Develop and research on software for application services.
---Develop Cyberinfrastructure supporting S&E collaboration

3. Introductions to the Relevant Institutes:
About Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CNIC,CAS)
The Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CNIC, CAS) is a subsidiary research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), engaged mainly in the construction, operation and supporting service of informatization of CAS, R&D of computer network technology, database technology as well as scientific engineering computation. 
Founded in April, 1995, CNIC is a research-supporting service institution evolved in the course of building up Scientific Database and China Science and Technology Network (CSTNet), the earliest-Internet-connected network in China. CNIC is also in charge of the operation and management of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
CNIC has undertaken several major research and engineering projects and won the 2nd and 3rd prizes of National Scientific and Technological Progress Award, and the special, 1st and 2nd prizes of the Scientific and Technological Progress Award of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
CNIC is also the lead unit to implement the CAS informatization construction projects for the “10th Five-year Plan” period. In recent years, CNIC has conducted extensive and friendly international co-operations and academic exchanges with a lot of countries and regions such as US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and HK.
Website: http://www.cnic.ac.cn    

About the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a leader in developing and deploying cutting-edge high-performance computing, networking and information technologies. NCSA is a partner in the TeraGrid project, a National Science Foundation initiative to build and deploy the world’s largest, fastest, most comprehensive, distributed infrastructure for open scientific research.
Website: www.ncsa.uiuc.edu    

About the Kurchatov Institute
The lead Russian institution, the Russian Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" is a nationwide complex of research facilities based in Moscow. Led by Dr. Evgeny Velikhov, it is under the direct authority of the Russian prime minister as a premier national research facility. The Institute has played a leading role in the development of
the Russian Internet and continues to lead development of scientific and academic networking across Russia, supporting specific goals of increased United States and Russian scientific cooperation and the advancement of communications and infrastructure to support it.
Website: www.kiae.ru