RFC ==>
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)
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