Request for Comments

The Requests for Comments ( RFC short, to German request for comments ) are a series of technical and organizational documents for the RFC Editor to the Internet ( originally the Arpanet ) that commenced on 7 April 1969. For the first publication nor identified in the original sense of the word under discussion, RFC retain even their name if they have evolved through general acceptance and use of the standard. In contrast, the running count ( numbering ) of the RFCs will be continued and assigned an RFC number again if a finally modified version is merged with a new version, possibly also combined from several precursors and with several additions to a new document.

RFC status

Each RFC has a status for the validity. Here are some examples:

Important RFCs

  • RFC 1 (first RFC by Steve Crocker )
  • RFC 768 ( UDP)
  • RFC 791 (IP)
  • RFC 792 (ICMP)
  • RFC 793 (TCP)
  • RFC 821 (SMTP)
  • RFC 822 (email format)
  • RFC 950 ( subnetting )
  • RFC 959 (FTP)
  • RFC 1006 (ISO on TCP - ISO Transport Service on top of the TCP)
  • RFC 1034 (DNS - Concepts and Facilities)
  • RFC 1035 (DNS - Implementation and Specification)
  • RFC 1036 ( Usenet - Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages)
  • RFC 1087 ( Ethics and the Internet)
  • RFC 1094 (NFS Version 2 Protocol Specification )
  • RFC 1166 ( IP address)
  • RFC 1321 (MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm)
  • RFC 1436 ( Gopher )
  • RFC 1459 (IRC )
  • RFC 1661 (PPP )
  • RFC 1700 ( Assigned Numbers )
  • RFC 1738 (URLs)
  • RFC 1813 ( NFS Version 3 Protocol Specification )
  • RFC 1939 ( POP3)
  • RFC 1945 (HTTP 1.0)
  • RFC 2131 (DHCP)
  • RFC 2222 ( SASL )
  • RFC 2440 ( OpenPGP )
  • RFC 2460 (IPv6 )
  • RFC 2606 ( for testing purposes Reserved Top Level Domains )
  • RFC 2613 ( Remote Network Monitoring )
  • RFC 2616 (HTTP 1.1)
  • RFC 2663 (NAT)
  • RFC 2821 (SMTP)
  • RFC 2822 (email format)
  • RFC 3174 (SHA)
  • RFC 3261 (SIP)
  • RFC 3501 (IMAP version 4 Protocol Specification )
  • RFC 3530 (NFS version 4 Protocol Specification )
  • RFC 3920 ( XMPP Core, as well as in RFC 3921 IM & Presence)
  • RFC 3986 ( URI )
  • RFC 4511 (LDAP)
  • RFC 4870 (Domain Keys)
  • RFC 5545 ( iCalendar )

Special types of documents in the RFC

Some RFCs are also Internet Standard ( STD), For Your Information ( FYI ), Best Current Practice ( BCP) or RARE Technical Report ( RTR) each with its own count. Chance are also found answers to common questions or obituaries.

FYI The category was introduced in 1990 and is aimed at a wide audience, which explicitly includes beginners.

The category was introduced in 1995 for BCP RFC, which can be no Internet standard, but are relevant.

  • RFC 1462 FYI = 20 FYI on What is the Internet?
  • RFC 1855 FYI = 28 Netiquette Guidelines
  • RFC 1935 What is the Internet, Anyway?
  • RFC 2119 = BCP 14 Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels
  • RFC 2468 I REMEMBER IANA, an obituary of Vinton Cerf for Jon Postel
  • RFC 5000 Internet Official Protocol 1 = STD standards, an overview of the most important Internet protocols

Success through formalism

RFCs are designed to be extremely formalistic:

  • Proposals for new or modified RFCs are clearly documented in all changes before formal publication.
  • A once at the end of published RFC is public and fixed forever. He also can not be corrected, but only replaced by newer RFCs.
  • How to write RFCs is defined in RFC 2223.
  • In RFC 2119 describes the significance of certain terms. Even terms such as MUST or MUST NOT be clearly defined in their meaning, in order to avoid confusion in their interpretation.
  • Strings and their composition are shown formalistic means of Backus -Naur Form (BNF ). This provides for an unambiguous interpretation of, for example, useful in the construction of URLs and URIs.

All these formalisms provide for the avoidance of doubt in the interpretation and implementation, and thus for the success of the operation of the Internet. Examples of these and equally for their success are mentioned RFC 2822 (e-mail ) and RFC 2616 (HTTP).

Humor in RFC

Between the official RFCs, the quasi- standard or " Best Current Practices " ( current best practices) describe, but are also a lot RFCs that should not be taken literally, often on the occasion of the 1st of April.

  • The published on 1 April 1996 RFC 1925 lists The Twelve Networking Truths that begin with the fundamental principle It Has To Work.
  • As a parody of the routing protocol MPLS Mostly Pointless Lamp Switching the can be found in RFC 3251.
  • RFC 2795 deals with the Infinite Monkey Theorem and describes how an infinite number of monkeys can be coordinated, which will produce the works of Shakespeare.
  • But real works of art can be identified, such as a hymn of praise to the Arpanet (RFC 527), history of science in verse (RFC 1121 ) or The Twelve Days of Christmas from the perspective of a stressed network admins (RFC 1882).
  • On 1 April 2001, the combinations of "foo " and have "bar" in RFC 3092 or its variants determined etymologically.
  • On April 1, 2003, an RFC ( RFC 3514 ) was published that calls to for IP packets, the "evil " (evil ) are in some way to set a corresponding bit in the header to filter out these packets to firewalls more easily to be able to. This is because in IPv4 headers a bit that the " Type of Service " indicating is normally set to 0, but is set by some modern applications 1. Some firewalls rely on the fact that this is 0, and gradually as an evil, as it is the package just a non- supported service type.
  • On 1 April 2004 a Allwissenheitsprotokoll was developed that would enable the U.S. government to recognize all forms of computer crime and prevent (RFC 3751 ). Once the requirements had been found to this protocol as not feasible, the text ends with the words: ". Good luck"
  • On 1 April 2005 a new standard was introduced, which morally proper routing allows (RFC 4041 ). Furthermore, it was the very getting on in years UTF- 8, 8 -bit units used, replaced by UTF- 9, 9 bits (3 × 3) per byte enables (RFC 4042 ).
  • A method for the transmission of IP over Winker alphabet was introduced (RFC 4824) On April 1, 2007.
  • On 1 April 2010 the Transmission Control Protocol has been extended: The mood of the transmitted packet can be determined by emoticons in the header. Thus, a package for example happy or frustrated (RFC 5841 ).

Realized April Fools

Not always, however, it remains at RFC on April 1 in the theory. Thus, an implementation of the RFC 1149 A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers was presented ( the transmission of IP datagrams by carrier pigeon ) on 6 March 2001. However, the average response time of a ping was 45 minutes, so do not be expected to regular use in real applications. However, this led to a further development of RFC 2549 IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service, but even this use is unlikely.

The editor Emacs for years contains a complete implementation of RFC 2324: Hypertext Coffee Pot Control Protocol ( HTCPCP ) is used for remote control and monitoring of coffee machines.

At the event, Hacking in Progress RFC 2322 Management of IP numbers by peg DHCP was formulated. It defines how IP numbers written with a marker pen on wooden clothespins and they are clinging to the associated cable. Although this RFC was meant as a joke, the method is used on a regular basis.

Also for the Pi Digit Generation Protocol there with gpigen a free implementation for multiple platforms.

Internet Control Message Protocol Network File System Internet Relay Chat Point-to-Point Protocol Uniform Resource Locator Post Office Protocol Simple Authentication and Security Layer Pretty Good Privacy#OpenPGP Secure Hash Algorithm Session Initiation Protocol Vint Cerf Backus–Naur Form De facto standard Infinite-Monkey-Theorem Sysop Etymology Morality 8-bit Flag semaphore Response time (technology) What The Hack Integrated Authority File
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