RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK — One of the true creators of the Internet was in the Triangle Thursday to kick off the grand opening of his company's new offices in Research Triangle Park.

Dr. Larry Roberts, founder of Caspian Networks, is trying to make the Internet faster, more intelligent and as reliable as the phone system. The new company features soothing desktop fountains and fish-filled aquariums which mirror their Silicon Valley offices -- an environment for changing the Internet.

"Thirty years ago when I started the Internet, we made it very dominant and the goal was that everybody could experiment through the Internet to figure out how to make it work better," Roberts says. "Well, we've had 30 years of experimenting, and now is the time to fix it."

Roberts and his engineers say the answer is redesigning switches that control Internet traffic. Unclogging the bottlenecks and optical networking will create a huge change in the way we use the Internet.

"So that it does think more, work more at managing the traffic effectively, grooming it effectively for the next link," he says.

Caspian Networks' Triangle workforce will double this year and continue to grow. The company chose the Triangle over eight major cities in the U.S. and Canada for its primary development office.