Request For Comments
Request For Comments
(standard)The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technicalexperts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by theInternet at large, rather than formally promulgated through aninstitution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remainknown as RFCs even once adopted as standards.
The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven,after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or smallworking 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 aflourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one ayear is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCshave included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IPDatagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second aparody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third adeadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describingprotocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrierpigeon.
The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - theymanage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rifein informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetratedmisfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and theydefine a network that has grown to truly worldwideproportions.
rfc.net.W3.JANET UK FTP.Imperial College, UK FTP.Nexor UK.Ohio State U.
See also For Your Information, STD.