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Could someone explain why standards are "RFC"s? Can't anyone request comments for something? Why would a request for comments be treated as a standard?
by mehrdadn 8y ago
Could someone explain why standards are "RFC"s? Can't anyone request comments for something? Why would a request for comments be treated as a standard?
- pas 8y agonot all RFCs are standards. RFCs that become one are labeled as STD and a number, but nobody uses those (afaik) https://www.ietf.org/rfc/std-index.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/std-index.txt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Standard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Standard
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wnissen 8y agoBecause the internet used to be unimaginably small. It really was just a couple of researchers talking to each other. They weren't co-located (the entire point of internetworking) so they had to mail stuff to each other, but it was more like when you send a copy of a document to your co-worker down the hall. "Hey, Jane, watcha think about this?" The first telnet (predecessor to SSH) RFC was 9 pages, including an example of the connection handshake.
- hak8or 8y agoYears ago when the internet was still a bunch of universities, the main few folks working in the network were often times tuning hardware like routers. I do not remember what the first rfc was about, but it was genuinely a "request for comments" document mailed it to others. Ever since then it stuck.
- ZWoz 8y agoIf you are interested history behind RFCs and early Internet, I suggest reading "Where wizards stay up late: the origins of the Internet" from Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon. Thats good book about arpanet formation and how arpanet and other networks together became Internet.