RFC
From S23Wiki
[edit] RFC
Request for Comments
Internet standards that have developed within the Internet community since 1969. They have grown to become a large series 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.
Internet Archaeology: Documents from Early History
[edit] Well-known RFCs
RFC 791 - IP - Internet Protocol
RFC 792 - ICMP - Internet Control Message Protocol (ping)
RFC 768 - UDP - User Datagram Protocol
RFC 793 - TCP - Transmission Control Protocol
RFC 854/855 - Telnet - Telnet Protocol Specification, Telnet Option Specifications
RFC 959 - FTP - File Transfer Protocol
RFC 891 - SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (Email)
RFC 1661 - PPP - The Point-to-Point Protocol
RFC 1939 - POP3 - Post Office Protocol - Version 3
RFC 2324 - Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)
[edit] April - RFC's
the really important RFC's:
April - RFC's
Example:
RFC 2795: The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)
This memo describes a protocol suite which supports an infinite number of monkeys that sit at an infinite number of typewriters in order to determine when they have either produced the entire works of William Shakespeare or a good television show. The suite includes communications and control protocols for monkeys and the organizations that interact with them.
 | This is the JargonFile (V4.00) entry for RFC - Next: RFE, Prev: return from the dead |
| :RFC: /R-F-C/ /n./ [Request For Comment] One of a long-established series of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Perhaps the single most influential one has been RFC-822 (the Internet 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. | |
| * (text is auto-included via JargonExtension by mutante using jargon with VERSION 4.0.0, 24 JUL 1996 - JargonFile by Eric S. Raymond is in the public domain) | |
