Raytheon BBN

BBN Technologies

Company type	Subsidiary of Raytheon
Founder	Leo Beranek and Richard Bolt
Headquarters	Cambridge, Massachusetts
Website	www.bbn.com

Dr. Talib Hussain, senior scientist at BBN Technologies, looks over the shoulder of a recruit during a training session on the Virtual Environments for Ship and Shore Experiential Learning system at Recruit Training Command.

BBN Technologies (originally Bolt, Beranek and Newman) is a high-technology company which provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. It is perhaps best known for its work in the development of packet switching (including the ARPANET and the Internet) and for its 1978 acoustical analysis for the House Select Committee on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but it is also a military contractor, primarily for DARPA.

History

Founded in 1948, by Leo Beranek and Richard Bolt, professors at MIT, with Bolt's former student Robert Newman, Bolt, Beranek and Newman started life as an acoustical consulting company. Their first contract was consultation for the design of the acoustics of the United Nations Assembly Hall in New York. Subsequent commissions included MIT's Kresge Auditorium (1954), Tanglewood's Koussevitzky Music Shed (1959), Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall (1962), the Cultural Center of the Philippines (1969) and Baltimore's Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (1978). They have examined the Richard Nixon tape with the 18 minutes erased during the Watergate scandal and the Dictabelt evidence which was purportedly a recording of the JFK assassination.

The substantial calculations required for acoustics work led to an interest, and later business opportunities, in computing. BBN was a pioneer in developing computer models of roadway and aircraft noise, and in designing noise barriers near highways. Some of this technology was used in landmark legal cases where BBN scientists were expert witnesses. BBN bought a number of computers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, notably the first production PDP-1 from Digital Equipment Corporation. BBN was involved in building some of the earliest Internet networks, including ARPANET, MILNET, CSNET, and NEARNET.

In 1989, BBN's acoustical consulting business was spun off into a new corporation, Acentech Incorporated, also based in Cambridge.

BBN was acquired by GTE in 1997 and BBN's ISP division BBN Planet was joined with GTE's national fiber network to become GTE Internetworking, "powered by BBN". When GTE and Bell Atlantic merged to become Verizon in 2000, the ISP portion of BBN was included in assets spun off as Genuity. In March 2004, Verizon sold BBN to a group of private investors. In September 2009, Raytheon entered into an agreement to acquire BBN. The acquisition was completed on October 29, 2009.

A number of well-known computer luminaries have worked at BBN, including John Seely Brown, Jerry Burchfiel, Richard Burton, Allan Collins, William Crowther, John Curran, Wally Feurzeig, Ed Fredkin, Bob Kahn, J. C. R. Licklider, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Dan Murphy, Severo Ornstein, Seymour Papert, Oliver Selfridge, Bob Thomas, Ray Tomlinson, and Peiter "Mudge" Zatko.

Former board members include Jim Breyer, Anita K. Jones and Gilman Louie.

Computer technologies

Some of BBN's notable developments in the field of computer networks are the implementation and operation of the ARPANET; the first person-to-person network email sent and the use of the @ sign in an email address; the first Internet protocol router (then called an Interface Message Processor); the Voice Funnel, an early predecessor of voice over IP; and work on the development of TCP. Other well-known BBN computer-related innovations include the first time-sharing system, the LOGO programming language, the TOPS-20 (TENEX) operating system, the Colossal Cave Adventure game, the first link-state routing protocol, and a series of mobile ad-hoc networks starting in the 1970s. BBN also is well known for its parallel computing systems, including the Pluribus, and the BBN Butterfly computers, which have been used for such tasks as warfare simulation for the U.S. Navy.

BBN was the first networking organization to receive an Autonomous System Number (AS1) for network identification. ASNs are an essential identification element used for Internet Backbone Routing. Lower numbers generally indicate a longer established presence on the Internet. AS1 is now operated by Level 3 Communications following their acquisition of Genuity.

Today, BBN leads a wide range of research and development projects, including the standardization effort for Internet security architecture (IPsec), the networking technology in the Joint Tactical Radio System, mobile ad hoc networks, advanced speech recognition, the military's Boomerang mobile shooter detection system, and quantum cryptography. BBN is also the managing the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) project office for the National Science Foundation.

See also

• DARWARS, a military simulation game developed with DARPA since 2003
• George G. Robertson
• Richard E. Hayden

External links

• Oral history interviews with various figures about BBN and the ARPANET, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Figures include the following: Vinton G. Cerf; Frank Heart; Robert E. Kahn; Leonard Kleinrock; Alexander A. McKenzie; Severo Ornstein; David C. Walden; Charles A. Zraket; and others.
• BBN Technologies
  • Timeline
• quantum.bbn.com
• Acentech Inc.