A system and method are disclosed for providing a high performance network connection service (HPNCS) for distributed computing applications. The HPNCS provides a network abstraction layer to the distributed applications and provides an interface to the underlying high performance on-demand dynamic circuit network (DCN). The HPNCS may relieve performance bottleneck problems encountered by the distributed applications due to the limited available networking bandwidth. The HPNCS may be used by distributed applications that need to access dedicated high performance network connection resources, such as DCN circuits, on an as-needed basis without over consuming expensive network resources.