The virtual future beyond the Internet is known as FIA.

At least it is to the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency in Washington, D.C. It’s funding that intriguing topic (FIA stands for the Future Internet Architecture program) with $15 million in research grants to some of the nation’s strongest tech leaning universities.

This is the third phase of a protracted study that began in 2006. The University of Wisconsin, Madison; Boston University; and the University of California at Berkeley are among others, are the newest recipients of the research cash, which the NSF hallmarked into three categories: “Deployment-Driven Evaluation and Evolution of the eXpressive Internet Architecture”; “Named Data Networking Next Phase”; and the third, “Next-Phase Mobility First Project.”

According to the NSF:

“The objective of the new awards is to move the FIA efforts from the design stage to piloted deployments that assess how the designs work at large-scale and within challenging, realistic environments. Cities, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and industrial partners across the nation will collaborate with researchers to test the new designs.”

The NSF, which has $800 million to fund research (tech or otherwise), told VentureBeat the research and beta-testing of systems designed under its purview aim to take the architecture of the current state of the Internet to the next level.