Classification and Characterization of Core Grid Protocols for Global Grid Computing

—Grid computing has attracted many researchers over a few years, and as a result many new protocols have emerged and also evolved since its inception a decade ago. Grid protocols play major role in implementing services that facilitate coordinated resource sharing across diverse organizations. In this paper, we provide comprehensive coverage of different core Grid protocols that can be used in Global Grid Computing. We establish the classification of core Grid protocols into i) Grid network communication and Grid data transfer protocols, ii) Grid information security protocols, iii) Grid resource information protocols, iv) Grid management protocols, and v) Grid interface protocols, depending upon the kind of activities handled by these protocols. All the classified protocols are also organized into layers of the Hourglass model of Grid architecture to understand dependency among these protocols. We also present the characteristics of each protocol. For better understanding of these protocols, we also discuss applied protocols as examples from either Globus toolkit or other popular Grid middleware projects. We believe that our classification and characterization of Grid protocols will enable better understanding of core Grid protocols and will motivate further research in the area of Global Grid Computing. I. INTRODUCTION Towards the realization of Global Grid Computing, many researchers have been attracted to broad research areas such as architectures, protocols, services, APIs, and toolkits of Grid in a last decade. Grid applications exploit services provided by Grid architecture to enable various scientific applications such as high performance computing, high-throughput computing, distributed super-computing, data-intensive computing, etc. Different services in Grid computing are defined in terms of the protocols that are used to interact with them and the expected behaviors from the services. Considerable research is going on protocols used in Grid computing and certain protocols are also standardized by Global Grid Forum [1]. However, proprietary Grid protocols are used for domain/application specific Grid architectures. Interoperability among these protocols is a headache while integrating different proprietary Grid architectures. The three point checklist definition of Grid in [2], " Grid is a system that coordinates resources that are not subject to central control using standard, open, general-purpose protocols and interfaces to deliver nontrivial qualities of service " , stresses on standard protocols and interfaces to enable global deployment of Grid as it is today for the Internet. Many international Grid projects (e.g., [3], [4], [5]) and national Grid projects (e.g., [6], [7], [8]), started in a last …