Request For Comments

standard (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered

Internet informational documents and standards widely

followed by commercial software and freeware in the

Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but

all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the

single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet

electronic mail format standard.

The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical

experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the

Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an

institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain

known as RFCs even once adopted as standards.

The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven,

after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small

working groups has important advantages over the more formal,

committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO.

Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a

flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a

year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs

have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June

1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1

April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP

Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April

1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a

parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a

deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing

protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier

pigeon.

The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they

manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife

in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated

misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they

define a network that has grown to truly worldwide

proportions.

rfc.net .

W3.

JANET UK FTP .

Imperial College, UK FTP .

Nexor UK .

Ohio State U.

See also For Your Information, STD.

(1997-11-10)