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RFC Request for Comments
Author: | Monday November 25, 2002
The Request for Comments document series are a set of technical and organizational notes about the internet. The RFC's define oftenly the structure or protocols of operational environments. Examples include the inner workings of the TCP/IP protocol and connection information for IMAP, SMTP and POP. If you are a programmer or would like to further your knowledge about how the internet works, then you should to read the Request for Comments.
The (RFC) Request for Comments originally began in 1969 for the ARPANET which is what we now know as the internet. These documents contain information and standards for "computer networking, including protocols, procedures, programs, and concepts, as well as meeting notes, opinions, and sometimes humor".
An RFC begins its life as an Internet Draft which is in effect an idea a company or person would like to standardize for the internet. This Internet Draft will eventually be submitted to the IESG for voting and final publishing as an RFC. Many large corporations submit Internet Drafts for publication with hopes that it will one day become an RFC. Once this has taken place, other companies, programmers and so forth will now have a foundation / standard that is publicly known and adhered to. You can now see at this moment the benefits of the RFCs every time you send an email. The SMTP protocol is an RFC which developers follow knowing that all other SMTP servers have followed the RFC standard.
By now you should already realize the importance of the RFCs, and if you have not by now, I will explain why we need it. Imagine an internet without standards or compliance, the internet would work like your Web Browser. Sometimes it would display properly based on your browser and sometimes it would not. A fantastic side effect of the RFCs is that the RFCs hamper any one company’s ability to standardize protocols and control the internet. Imagine if Microsoft developed there own SMTP standard, it would be utter chaos. But since all users have a document to follow, developers will adhere to an open standard rather then a closed one. A document for the HTTP protocol exists which is the underlying foundation of how information is passed between client and server. To bad the RFCs do not govern application interfaces so that all browsers would work the same, but luckily, the RFCs do dictate how your browser will request a page from a server and how that page will be sent to your browser.
This was a quick overview of the RFCs and I would recommend you read them further. I guarantee you will be fascinated by the amount of information they hold and what you can learn from these documents and the many fine people who have written them.
EXAMPLE RFC : SMTP : RFC 821
· Linuxdig.com maintains the full document series of the Request for Comments at http://www.linuxdig.com/rfc
· Information for the article was gathered from http://www.rfc-editor.org
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