[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 (since actually implemented; see Appendix A). See
also {Infinite-Monkey Theorem}.
The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work -- they
frequently 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.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {kamikaze packet}{Postel's Prescription}{postmaster}{quote chapter and verse}{RFE}]