Request For Comments
RFC

    (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)