Grid computing is a promising way to aggregate geographically distant machines and to allow them to work together to solve large problems. After studying Grid network requirements, we observe that the network must take part of the Grid computing session to provide intelligent adaptative transport of Grid data streams. By proposing new intelligent dynamic services, active network can be the perfect companion to easily and efficiently deploy and maintain Grid environments and applications. This paper presents the Active Grid Architecture (A-Grid) which focus on active networks adaptation for supporting Grid environments and applications. We focus the benefit of active networking for the grid on three aspects: High performance and dynamic active services, Active Reliable Multicast, and Active Quality of Service. \textcopyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001.