Request for Comments
A Request for Comments, or RFC for short, is one of a series of documents about the Internet, mostly technical, but some about policy issues. Some become de facto Internet standards, which set the engineering specifications for the internals of the Internet, while many others languish largely or completely ignored. The series was started in 1969 (before the Internet existed, when its predecessor, the ARPANET, was just being started). The RFC process arose from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)[1], part of the U. S. Advanced Research (ARPA) initiative funded in reaction to the Soviet launch of Sputnik. IETF and the RFC process led, eventually, to the development of the Internet.
Public collaboration in refining of RFC's, whereby literally any person could submit, or comment upon, an RFC, was remarkable, and the IETF proved to be about as effective as formally endorsed standards bodies at creating usable and widely adopted standards. The non-proprietary nature of the RFC process also foreshadowed the later development, in the 1980's, of the open source software movement.
Most RFCs are produced by the IETF, but an RFC document can also be submitted to the RFC Editor by anyone (after being published as an Internet Draft). It is up to the RFC editor (who usually checks with the IETF) to determine whether or not to accept it. Eventually, if it gains enough interest, it may evolve into an Internet standard by dent of being widely accepted and used for implementation. Some RFC's also result from a deliberate sharing of formerly proprietary specifications by industry participants, notably some of the open specifications leading to the industry-wide IBM compatible PC beginning in the early 1980's.
Each RFC is designated by an RFC number. Once published, an RFC never changes (although there are now errata sheets for them). Modifications to an original RFC are assigned a new RFC number.
Some examples :
- SMTP ["Simple Mail Transfer Protocol". Was RFC 821 (STANDARD), Obsoleted by RFC 2821 (PROPOSED STANDARD)]
- HTTP ["Hypertext Transfer Protocol" -- HTTP/1.1 RFC 2616]
- BGP-4 ["A Border Gateway Protocol 4" (BGP-4) RFC 4271]
External Links
- ↑ "IETF: History, Background, and Role in Today's Internet". Gary C. Kessler (1996). Retrieved on 2007-04-23.