RFC /R-F-C/ n. [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.

RFC /R-F-C/ n.

[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.

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.