EQUTE — The internet is getting up there, and it’s showing some real signs of a mid-life crisis.

There won’t be any fancy cars or vapid trophy wives at casa de Internet, the crisis is internal, but could affect how people do everything on the Internet.

What began as a little military project, Arpanet spread like wildfire, spawning innovation and plenty of procrastination, but some Internet experts think that innovation is slowing down greatly as more regulation comes to the Internet and ISPs put the kibosh on tools that could let it grow further.

Basically, the crisis is one of “net-neutrality,” or the idea of keeping an unrestricted gateway into the Internet.

Internet service providers have been bottle-necking the speed of file sharing, a move that saw Comcast censured by the FCC. And some other ISPs are charging extra for everyday use of the Internet — putting caps on data and charging more for watching things like Netflix Watch it Now videos. Even innovators like Apple are restricting the Internet, swinging their ban hammer at applications galore.

While it might seem like an inconvenience more than a crisis, this bottlenecking could stand in the way of future innovation or new ways of finding media on the Internet.

“You are less likely to try things out,” Vint Cerf, Google’s chief Internet evangelist and one of the Internet’s founding fathers, told the Associated Press. “No one wants a surprise bill at the end of the month.”

If puritanical influences, for instance, had stopped Internet pornography back when it first arrived, video on the Internet could be drastically different — high-quality streaming video found on Hulu or Netflix might never have been.

It’s exactly the same argument now, if ISPs start charging for greater bandwidth usage, they run the risk of people staying away from stunning sites like Vimeo or even major network TV station sites just to keep their bill in check.

Bottom line, innovation comes when we least expect it — like silly putty bouncing out of a government explosive lab. The Internet needs some breathing room to continue growing.