The Internet is outgrowing itself. Innovations have virtually exhausted the resources the current network has to offer, according to Rudra Dutta , associate professor of computer science and engineering.

“There are things that people have thought about doing, that people have wanted to do, or already conceived of how they might go about it but it couldn’t be done on today’s internet,” Dutta said. “So the risk is that it never gets done.”

That is why the National Science Foundation is funding N.C . State’s research into what is called the Future Internet.

Dutta and George Rouskas , professor of computer science and engineering, are part of a collaborative grant from the NSF with the University of Kentucky, the UNC-Chapel Hill and University of Massachusetts Amherst. Over the next three years, the team will work to build the Internet a solid foundation for innovation in the years to come.

Tilman Wolf, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts, said he and Dutta and Rouskas have known each other for years through conferences and knew they had common interests.

“It was kind of natural to work with them,” Wolf said of when this multi-university project arose.

Dutta and Rouskas will receive $650,000 over the next three years to work on their side of the project.

“This is fundamental research on the evolution of the architecture of the Internet,” Dutta said. “The Internet is seen as part of the critical infrastructure of not just the U.S . … but the entire human civilization.”

According to Wolf, the current consensus is that it will take a completely new architecture for the Internet to get it to do the things innovators want.

Dutta and Rouskas are—as part of the NSF’s effort fund research into the Future Internet before innovation stagnates—hoping to provide a mechanism for consumers to have choices on the individual services of the Internet.

Dutta said if you have problems with Netflix download speeds and you call your internet provider, they might blame it on the website server. Netflix might then in turn blame it on the provider.

“In fact it might be something in the middle,” Dutta said.

Road Runner and other providers give only access to the Internet, according to Dutta . The providers then buy services from the middle of the network that have to do with things like video or photo download speeds.

“So if something goes wrong or if something doesn’t work as well as I thought it would have worked when I was [paying the provider], then I have to know which party—which of these multiple services I might have been using—basically let me down,” Dutta said.

Rouskas compared it to being stuck in a cell phone contract.

“What we want to do is be able to say, ‘Look we want to have providers compete for you so the user can have a choice not just once every two years or so but basically almost every time you want to do something important on the internet,'” Rouskas said.

By the end of the project, according to Rouskas , they hope to have a working prototype of the choice-enabling system.

That is where students come in.

“This project has funding for several students. I believe there are two [ Ph.D .] students here at N.C . State,” Rouskas said. “One of the tasks that the students are going to do in addition to the research is build the system.”

The hope is that with choices, according to Rouskas , not only will innovation be encouraged, but that innovation can lead to lower prices.

“The idea is that if you introduce competition, that means innovation, and that will also hopefully lead to lower price. So there are two aspects of that. There is the competition that brings innovation and there is the aspect of the competition that for similar services brings lower price,” Rouskas said.

According to Wolf, the Future Internet remains at least five to 10 years out, and it isn’t a sure thing this project will be a part of it.

“…When the time comes and the new Internet gets deployed, then hopefully people are conscious of the fact that people want to make choices about what services they want and there need to be mechanisms in the network to support these choices,” Wolf said.