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Generally, Internet standards define interoperability of systems on the Internet by
defining protocols, message formats, schemas, and languages. The most
fundamental of the standards are the ones defining the Internet protocol (IP).
All Internet standards are given a number in the STD series. The first document
in this series, STD 1, describes the remaining documents in the series, and has a
list of proposed standards. Often, documents in the STD series are copies of
RFCs or are a few RFCs collected together. STD numbers do not have version
numbers since all updates are made via RFCs and the RFC numbers are unique.
To clearly specify which version of a standard one is referring to, the standard
number and all of the RFCs which it includes should be stated.
Request for comment (RFC)
Requests for comments (RFCs) are a series, begun in 1969, of numbered
Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial
software and freeware developers 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
(e-mail) format standard.
The RFCs issued by the IETF and its predecessors are the most well-known
series named “RFCs”; this series is almost always what is meant by RFC without
further qualification. However, other organizations have, in the past, also issued
series called RFCs.
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 being formally
promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain
known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. This 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. 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 Fool's Day.
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.
Accessing STDs and RFCs
STDs and RFCs are available publicly and online. The easiest way to obtain
them is from the IETF Web site at the following URL:
http://www.ietf.org
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