Bill Buchanan - Be More BBN Than IBM

Please excuse me for using IBM in the title — I have the greatest of respect for a company that has continued to lead and innovate over the past six decades (and who have existed for over a century). The point of this article is to showcase where you, your team or your company have a deep passion for doing something great. For this, we go back to the roots of one of the greatest inventions in the history of humankind: The Internet.

In fact, we would probably not have the Internet without one magical little company (BBN) and the vision of one person (Larry Roberts). At the time, most had the word “FAILURE” written over the ARPANET project, and if it had failed, the Internet would probably never happen. Think about that for a few minutes.

If we go right back to the creation of ARPANET, it was Larry Roberts who published an RFQ (Request For Quote) to interested companies. The task was to build an IMP (Interface Message Processor) and route data across an interconnected network, and this connect disparate computer systems together. While most things at the time focused on cumbersome and centralised circuit-switching, Larry wanted to use a packet-switched approach.

And, so, the big companies prepared their bids and did their usual tendering processing — and basically took what they had, would just deliver to the requirements. Few of them had any faith in what was being built and could only see this as another failed government research project that went nowhere. And to integrate with academia, too, was always going to be a challenge, as academics would want to build something that protected their resources while enabling them to extend their research. In fact, IBM's solution was to use the large System 360 mainframe computer to undertake the task of routing data.

Anyone who has ever bidded for a government contract will know that when you submit it, you think you will win it, but this decays over time, and where you often move to a state of knowing that you will not get it.

But, while companies like DEC, Raytheon and IBM failed to see how the creation of the IMP would go anywhere, there was one company that put its heart and soul into the bid: BBN. In fact, it is thought that they spent around six months of time developing the bid. For this, they did a full investigation into the working of the IMP, and had even investigated the hardware and code that it would require. And, so, while they were honest in saying that it was going to be a major challenge, they then laid out the route to the solution and shared their insights. This showed to Larry that, like him, this was not just another project but one that would match the vision of the company.

And, for such a project, most of the companies defined long chains of authority and management, whereas BBN’s approach was to have a single point of focus, and a simplified management approach. Basically, there was a single contact for every question, rather than long lines of delegated responsibility.

At, the time, people used to say, “No one gets fired by buying IBM”, so Larry was laying his whole reputation on the line by going with this small company, which had little in the way of resources to compete with IBM or DEC. But, they had passion and vision and wanted the contract with all their lives. The company were successful in other ways and did not need the grant to sustain them- but they knew its importance. A failure of this project, and there would be no more building of packet-switched network — and possibly no future Internet. And, so, they invested much more time than virtually all the bidders put together.

In fact, BBN were actually the first to have an Autonomous System Number (AS1). This is a special number which makes routing on the Internet so much easier, as we just need to know which autonomous system to give our data too, in order to get it routed to the destination. This can be an intermediatory route through the AS, or where the AS hosts the target device.

The choice of an AS approach — using BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) — has really been one of the most fundamental elements in building the Internet at scale. While not perfect, it works! BBN also strived to secure BGP, as it was fundamentally important that no single entity — especially a malicious one — would take over the routing of the Internet. In fact, BBN invented the link-state routing method, and which allowed the “best” route to be discovered to a destination — through the intercommunication of routing tables from devices.

Now, Level 3 Communications uses AS1.

BBN, too, were one of the first companies to be an internet service provider and were the second organisation in the world to register a domain name (on 24 April 1985 with bbn.com):

Domain Name: bbn.com
Registry Domain ID: 4240240_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.corsearch.domains
Registrar URL: 
Updated Date: 2023-05-09T19:30:10Z
Creation Date: 1985-04-24T05:00:00Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2024-04-25T04:00:00Z
Registrar: Corsearch Domains LLC
Registrar IANA ID: 642
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: [email protected]
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: [phone]
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited

And, here is the BBN Web page from 1985 [here]:

Why were BBN so successful? They had a passion and a drive, and they recruited the best talent around. In fact, BBN was sometimes know as the “the third university” in Cambridge, alongside Harvard and MIT. The key to any innovative company’s success is their HR function, and in making sure they get the best talent around. One great engineer with a passion and drive can often trump teams of hundreds. But, they must want to do the work — so must be given stimulating and challenging roles.

After innovating in so many areas, in 2009, BBN became a wholly owned subsidiary of one of the companies they beat off for the ARPANET contract: Raytheon.

Conclusion

And, so, if you really want something, put your heart and soul into it, and show the grant/contract reviewers that this is all just part of your vision to build a better world.