CHAPEL HILL–RENCI’s networking research group is part of a team that will design a blueprint for a future version of the Internet.

The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, leads the $2.7 million, three-year project, named ChoiceNet, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. In addition to RENCI at UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and the University of Kentucky have roles in the project. The project complements the work of the NSF program, Future Internet Architecture (FIA). FIA’s goal is to stimulate innovative and creative research to explore, design, and evaluate trustworthy future Internet architectures. 

ChoiceNet is based on the fundamental idea that enabling user choice in networking services will spur innovation while making the future Internet more economically sustainable. The project will enable user choice in three ways:  by encouraging alternative services that allow users to choose from a range of services, by giving users information on the performances of those services and available alternatives, and by allowing users to ‘vote with their wallet,’ and choose the services and thereby reward superior and innovative services.

The research of the ChoiceNet team members builds on previously funded projects in the now completed NSF Future Internet Design (FIND) program. RENCI and NC State will leverage their previous work on the SILO architecture (Services Integration controL and Optimization) project. That project focused on designing an alternative Internet protocol architecture in which protocol stacks were dynamically composed out of basic services based on their ontological descriptions.

RENCI will receive $480,000 over the three-year grant period, which began Sept. 15.