In computer network A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of computers and devices connected by communications channels that facilitates communications among users and allows users to share resources with other users. Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics. This article provides a general engineering, a Request for Comments (RFC) is a memorandum A memorandum or memo is a document or other communication that helps the memory by recording events or observations on a topic, such as may be used in a business office. The plural form is either memoranda or memorandums published by the Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. It is an open standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements. All participants and managers are (IETF) describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and and Internet-connected systems.

Through the Internet Society The Internet Society or ISOC is an international, nonprofit organization founded during 1992 to provide direction in Internet related standards, education, and policy. It states that its mission is "to assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world", engineers and computer scientists may publish discourse Discourse means either "written or spoken communication or debate" or "a formal discussion of debate." The term is often used in semantics and discourse analysis in the form of an RFC, either for peer review Peer review is a generic term that is used to describe a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals with the related field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance, and provide credibility or simply to convey new concepts, information, or (occasionally) engineering humor. The IETF adopts some of the proposals published as RFCs as Internet standards In computer network engineering, an Internet Standard is a normative specification of a technology or methodology applicable to the Internet. Internet Standards are created and published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

History

The inception of the RFC format occurred in 1969 as part of the seminal ARPANET ARPANET , created by a small research team at the head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense, was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the contemporary global Internet. The packet switching of the project.^[1] Today, it is the official publication channel for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board The Internet Architecture Board is the committee charged with oversight of the technical and engineering development of the Internet by the Internet Society (ISOC) (IAB), and—to some extent—the global community of computer network researchers in general.

The authors of the first RFCs typewrote A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with a set of keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. From their invention before 1870 through much of the 20th century, typewriters were indispensable tools for many professional writers and in business offices. By the end of the 1980s, word their work and circulated hard copies In information handling, a hard copy is a permanent reproduction, or copy, in the form of a physical object, of any media suitable for direct use by a person , of displayed or transmitted data. Examples of hard copy include teleprinter pages, continuous printed tapes, facsimile pages, computer printouts, and radio photo prints among the ARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major effect on the world, including computer networking, as well as NLS, which researchers. Unlike the modern RFCs, many of the early RFCs were requests for comments. The RFC leaves questions open and is written in a less formal style. This less formal style is now typical of Internet Draft Internet Drafts is a series of working documents published by the IETF. Typically, they are drafts for RFCs, but may be other works in progress not intended for publication as RFCs. It is considered inappropriate to rely on Internet Drafts for reference purposes. I-D citations should indicate the I-D is a "work in progress" documents, the precursor step before being approved as an RFC.

In December 1969, researchers began distributing new RFCs via the newly operational ARPANET. RFC 1, entitled "Host Software", was written by Steve Crocker Stephen D. Crocker is the inventor of the Request for Comments series, authoring the very first RFC and many more. He received his bachelor's degree (1968) and PhD (1977) from the University of California, Los Angeles of the University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. It was founded in 1919 and is the second oldest of the ten campuses affiliated with the University of California system. UCLA offers over 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide (UCLA), and published on April 7, 1969. Although written by Steve Crocker, the RFC emerged from an early working group A working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms (e.g. federal agencies). The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years. Such groups have the tendency to develop a quasi-permanent discussion between Steve Crocker, Steve Carr Next Friday · Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001) · Daddy Day Care (2003) · Rebound (2005) · Are We Done Yet? (2007) · Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) and Jeff Rulifson Johns F. Rulifson (born August 20, 1941) is a computer scientist largely known for his involvement at the Augmentation Research Center, at then-named Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in implementing the oN-Line System (NLS), a system that foreshadowed many future developments in modern computing and networking. Although Douglas. (The document lists Bill Duvall as having attended only the final working group meeting prior to publication.)

In RFC 3, which first defined the RFC series, Crocker started attributing the RFC series to the "Network Working Group". This group seems never to have had a formal existence, being rather defined as "this group of people", but the attribution remains on RFCs to this day.

Many of the subsequent RFCs of the 1970s also came from UCLA, not only because of the quality of the scholarship Scholarly method or scholarship — is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public, but also because UCLA was one of the first Interface Message Processors The Interface Message Processor was the packet-switching node used to interconnect participant networks to the ARPANET from the late 1960s to 1989. It was the first generation of gateways, which are known today as routers. An IMP was a ruggedized Honeywell DDP-516 minicomputer with special-purpose interfaces and software. In later years the IMPs (IMPs) on ARPANET.

Douglas Engelbart Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart is an American inventor and early computer pioneer. He is best known for inventing the computer mouse, as a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs; and as a committed and vocal proponent of the development and use of computers and networks to help's Augmentation Research Center Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center was founded by electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing. The main product to come out of ARC was the revolutionary oN-Line System, better known by its odd abbreviation, NLS. ARC is also known (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute SRI International, founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in the United States, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later incorporated as an independent non-profit organization was another of the four first ARPANET nodes In communication networks, a node is a connection point, either a redistribution point or a communication endpoint (some terminal equipment). The definition of a node depends on the network and protocol layer referred to. A physical network node is an active electronic device that is attached to a network, and is capable of sending, receiving, or, as well as the first Network Information Centre A domain name registry, is a database of all domain names registered in a top-level domain. A registry operator, also called a Network Information Center , is the part of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that keeps the database of domain names, and generates the zone files which convert domain names to IP addresses. Each NIC is an, and (as noted by the sociologist Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social activity, often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Subject matter Thierry Bardini) the source of a large number of early RFCs.

From 1969 until 1998, Jon Postel Jonathan Bruce Postel was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to standards. He is known principally for being the Editor of the Request for Comment (RFC) document series, and for administering the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority until his death served as the RFC editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing language, images, sound, video, or film through processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications in various media. A person who edits is called an editor. In a sense, the editing process originates with the idea for the work itself and continues in the relationship. (On his death in 1998, his obituary was published as RFC 2468.) Following the expiration of the original ARPANET contract with the U.S. federal government, the Internet Society (acting on behalf of the IETF) contracted with the Networking Division of the USC The University of Southern California is a private, nonsectarian, research university located in the University Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, USA. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university Information Sciences Institute The Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California (USC) is a prominent research organization in the field of information science; it is part of the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC. It is involved in a broad spectrum of information processing research, and in the development of advanced computer and communication to assume the editorship and publishing responsibilities (under the direction of the IAB). Jon Postel continued to serve as the RFC Editor until his death. Later, Bob Braden Robert Braden is an American computer scientist who played a role in the development of the Internet took over the role of project lead, while Joyce K. Reynolds continued to be part of the team until October 13, 2006.

RFC production and evolution

The RFC Editor assigns each RFC a unique serial number A serial number is a unique number assigned for identification which varies from its successor or predecessor by a fixed discrete integer value. Common usage has expanded the term to refer to any unique alphanumeric identifier for one of a large set of objects, however not every numerical identifier is a serial number; identifying numbers which. Once assigned a number and published, an RFC is never rescinded or modified; if the document requires amendments, the authors publish a revised document. Therefore, some RFCs supersede others; the superseded RFCs are said to be deprecated, obsolete, or even obsoleted (sic). Together, the serialized RFCs compose a continuous historical record of the evolution of Internet standards and practices.

Note that the term RFC is not unique to this series. Several other organizations have published documents using the term RFC. However, the IETF RFCs are by far the best-known RFC series on the Internet.

The RFC production process differs from the standardization Standardization or standardisation is the process of developing and agreeing upon technical standards. A standard is a document that establishes uniform engineering or technical specifications, criteria, methods, processes, or practices. Some standards are mandatory while others are voluntary. Voluntary standards are available if one chooses to process of formal standards organizations such as ISO The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO (pronounced /ˈaɪsoʊ/ EYE-soe), is an international-standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on 23 February 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary industrial and commercial standards. It has. Internet technology experts may submit an Internet Draft Internet Drafts is a series of working documents published by the IETF. Typically, they are drafts for RFCs, but may be other works in progress not intended for publication as RFCs. It is considered inappropriate to rely on Internet Drafts for reference purposes. I-D citations should indicate the I-D is a "work in progress" without support from an external institution. Standards-track RFCs are published with approval from the IETF, and are usually produced by experts participating in working groups It operates on rough consensus, is open to all who want to participate, has discussions on an open mailing list, and may hold meetings at IETF meetings. Unlike, for instance, IEEE working groups, the mailing list consensus is the final arbiter of decision-making, and there is no voting procedure, but a "rough consensus" procedure, which first publish an Internet Draft. This approach facilitates initial rounds of peer review before documents mature into RFCs.

The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standards authorship accomplished by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ISO and national standards bodies.

Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of joke RFCs. Typically at least one is published each year, usually on April Fools' Day April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is a day celebrated in various countries on April 1. The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbors, or sending them on a fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible.

Most RFCs use a common set of terms such as "MUST" and "NOT RECOMMENDED" (as defined by RFC 2119), Augmented Backus–Naur Form (ABNF) (as defined by RFC 5234) as a metalanguage, and simple text-based formatting, in order to keep the RFCs consistent and easy to understand.^[2]

For more details about RFCs and the RFC process, see RFC 2026, "The Internet Standards Process, Revision 3".^[2]

Obtaining RFCs

The official source for RFCs on the World Wide Web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British is the RFC Editor.

One may retrieve almost any individual, published RFC, like RFC 5000, via a URL In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym for URI,. The best-known example of a URL is the " in the form of the following example: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5000.txt

Every RFC is submitted as plain ASCII The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text. Most modern character-encoding schemes are based on ASCII, though they support many more characters than did ASCII text and is published in that form, but may also be available in other formats Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for different kinds of information. Within any format type, e.g., word processor documents, there will typically be several different formats. Sometimes. However, as of 2008^[update] the definitive version of any standards-track In computer network engineering, an Internet Standard is a normative specification of a technology or methodology applicable to the Internet. Internet Standards are created and published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) specification is the ASCII version.

For easy access to the metadata of an RFC, including abstract, keywords, author(s), publication date, errata, status, and especially later updates, the RFC Editor site offers a search form with many features. A redirection sets some efficient parameters, example: http://purl.net/net/rfc/5000

Status

Not all RFCs are standards.^[3] Each RFC is assigned a designation with regard to status within the Internet standardization process. This status is one of the following: Informational, Experimental, Best Current Practice (BCP), Standards Track, or Historic (sic). Standards-track documents are further divided into Proposed Standard, Draft Standard, and Internet Standard documents. The term Historic is applied to deprecated standards-track documents or obsolete RFCs that were published before the standards track was established. Only the IETF, represented by the Internet Engineering Steering Group It provides the final technical review of Internet standards and is responsible for day-to-day management of the IETF. It receives appeals of the decisions of the working groups, and the IESG makes the decision to progress documents in the standards track (IESG), can approve standards-track In computer network engineering, an Internet Standard is a normative specification of a technology or methodology applicable to the Internet. Internet Standards are created and published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFCs. Each RFC is static; if the document is changed, it is submitted again and assigned a new RFC number. If an RFC becomes an Internet Standard (STD), it is assigned an STD number but retains its RFC number; however, when an Internet Standard is updated, its number stays the same and it simply refers to a different RFC or set of RFCs. A given Internet Standard, STD n, may be RFCs x and y at a given time, but later the same standard may be updated to be RFC z instead. For example, in 2007 RFC 3700 was an Internet Standard—STD 1—and in May 2008 it was replaced with RFC 5000, so RFC 3700 changed to Historic, RFC 5000 became an Internet Standard, and as of May 2008^[update] STD 1 is RFC 5000. When STD 1 is updated again, it will simply refer to a newer RFC that will have completed the standards track, but it will still be STD 1. Best Current Practices work in a similar fashion; BCP n refers to a certain RFC or set of RFCs, but which RFC or RFCs may change over time.

The definitive list of Internet Standards is itself an Internet Standard, STD 1: Internet Official Protocol Standards.^[4]

Status "informational"

An informational RFC can be nearly anything from April 1 jokes over proprietary protocols up to widely recognized essential RFCs like RFC 1591. Some informational RFCs form the subseries for your information (FYI). While rarely added to today, some old FYIs are still interesting, for example, FYI 18 (RFC 1983), the Internet User's Glossary. FYI 17, The Tao of IETF, is now RFC 4677, published in 2006.

Status "experimental"

An experimental RFC can be an IETF document or an individual submission to the 'RFC Editor'. In theory it is indeed experimental; in practice some documents are not promoted on standards track because there are no volunteers for the procedural details.

Status "best current practice"

The best current practice (BCP) subseries collects administrative documents and other texts which are considered as official rules and not only informational, but which do not affect over the wire data. The border between standards track and BCP is often unclear. If a document only affects the Internet Standards Process, like BCP 9, or IETF administration, it is clearly a BCP. If it only defines rules and regulations for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is the entity that oversees global IP address allocation, root zone management for the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Internet Protocol related assignments. It is operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, better known as ICANN (IANA) registries it is less clear; most of these documents are BCPs, but some are on the standards track.

The BCP series also covers technical recommendations for how to practice Internet standards; for instance the recommendation to use source filtering to make DoS attacks more difficult (RFC 2827: "Network Ingress Filtering: Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source Address Spoofing") is BCP 38.

Status "historic"

A historic RFC is one that has been made obsolete by a newer version, documents a protocol that is not considered interesting in the current Internet, or has been removed from the standards track for other reasons. Some obsolete RFCs are not classified as historic, because the Internet standards process generally does not allow normative references from a standards track RFC to another RFC with lower status. Also, few are interested in working through the required procedural details to get RFCs classified as historic and update all RFCs normatively depending on it.

Status "unknown"

Status unknown is used for some very old RFCs, where it is unclear which status the document would get if it were published today. Some of these RFCs wouldn't be published at all today; an early RFC was often just that: a simple request for comments, not intended to specify a protocol, administrative procedure, or anything else for which the RFC series is used today.

See also

• Internet Experiment Note
• Academic publishing Academic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The non commercial part of academic publishing is called grey literature. Much, though not all, academic publishing relies on some form of peer review or editorial
• April Fools' Day RFC
• List of RFCs

References

1. ^ Stephen D. Crocker, How the Internet Got Its Rules, The New York Times, 6 April 2009
2. ^ ^{a b} "RFC Index". RFC Editor. 2008-05-25. http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-index2.html. Retrieved 2008-05-26.
3. ^ Huitema, C.; Postel, J.; Crocker, S. (April 1995). "Not All RFCs are Standards (RFC 1796)". The Internet Engineering Task Force. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1796. Retrieved 2008-05-19. "[E]ach RFC has a status…: Informational, Experimental, or Standards Track (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard, Internet Standard), or Historic."
4. ^ "Internet Official Protocol Standards (STD 1)" (plain text). RFC Editor. April 1995. ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/std/std1.txt. Retrieved 2008-05-19.

Further reading

• Scott O. Bradner (October 1996). "RFC 2026: The Internet Standards Process — Revision 3". IETF. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026. Retrieved 2008-12-20.

External links

• IETF's RFC page
• RFC Index (HTML) With the text of each RFC, also mentions what other RFCs this one "updates" or is "updated by".
• RFC Database
• RFC Editor
• RFC Errata
• RFC Frequently Asked Questions
• RFC Index (text)
• Official RFC standardization status

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing is an online, searchable, encyclopedic dictionary of computing subjects. It was founded in 1985 by Denis Howe and is hosted by Imperial College London. Howe has served as the editor-in-chief since the dictionary's inception, with visitors to the website able to make suggestions for additions or corrections, which is licensed under the GFDL The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license.

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