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RFC
(RFC) One of a series 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, begun in 1969, of pragmatic, experience-driven,
after-the-fact standard
writing 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 RFC 527, RFC 748 and RFC 1149.
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 (http://rfc.net/). {W3
(http://w3.org/hypertext/DataSources/Archives/RFC_sites.html)}.
See also For Your Information, STD.
(1997-11-10)
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