Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc.) is an American research and development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[1] In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown Medal, in 1999 BBN received the IEEE Corporate Innovation Recognition, and on 1 February 2013, BBN was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honors that the U.S. government bestows upon scientists, engineers and inventors, by President Barack Obama.

BBN has its roots in an initial partnership formed on 15 October 1948 between Leo Beranek and Richard Bolt, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Realizing the magnitude of the project at hand, Bolt had pulled in his MIT colleague Beranek for help and the partnership between the two was born.

It has made notable advances in a wide variety of fields, including acoustics, computer technologies, quantum information, and synthetic biology.

In recent years, BBN has led a wide range of research and development projects, including the standardization effort for the security extension to the Border Gateway Protocol (BGPsec), mobile ad hoc networks, advanced speech recognition, the military's Boomerang mobile shooter detection system, cognitive radio spectrum use via the DARPA XG program.

BBN also led the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) project for the National Science Foundation, which ultimately built out programmable "future Internet" infrastructure across approximately 60 university campuses.

[19] In August 1968, BBN was selected by ARPA to build the Interface Message Processors (IMPs) for the ARPANET, the precursor to the modern Internet.

[23] The first message between the two IMPs was "LO" — phonetically, "Hello" — but the SRI host crashed before the UCLA researcher could complete typing the "LOGIN" command.

Many failed minor adjustments led the walls, balconies, and ceilings to be torn out and dumped, and a new consultant oversaw a repair that cost millions of dollars over several years.

[29] In early 2004, BBN applied its acoustics expertise to design, develop, and deliver the Boomerang shooter detection system in a little over two months to combat the sniper threat US troops faced in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

[37] Other well-known BBN computer-related innovations include Interlisp programming language, the TENEX operating system, and the Colossal Cave Adventure game.

BBN also created a series of mobile ad hoc networks starting in the 1970s with DARPA's experimental PRNET and SURAN systems.

It also created the networking portions of the U.S. Army's Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) and Canada's Iris Digital Communications System.