RFC

Draft

Definition

The RFC (Request for Comments) series contains technical and organizational documents about the Internet, including the technical specifications and policy documents produced by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Some of these are standards, some have just informational or experimental status. The publications process has been design to be fast and there is a peer control mechanism (i.e. an RFC first must be published as an Internet Draft.

Categories of RFCs

Today there are over 3000 RFCs (some obsolete, e.g. superseded by more recent ones).

Standards RFCs

Some of the most popular RFCs concern all the things that make Internet work....

• SMTP
• URI (URLs and URNs)
• TCP
• Domain Names
• HTTP
• MIME, e.g. RFC 2045, RFC 2047, RFC 2231

"For your Information" (FYU) RFCs

A few contain guidelines for usage/behavior, e.g.

• RFC-1855 - Netiquette Guidelines. It contains advice like:

“Read both mailing lists and newsgroups for one to two months before you post anything. This helps you to get an understanding of the culture of the group.”

• RFC-3098/FYI-38 - How to Advertise Responsibly Using E-Mail and Newsgroups.

Current Best Practices

These are technical documents that tell how to use standards (e.g. implement something). E.g.

• RFC-1918 Address Allocation for Private Internets

For education

There are not many RFC standards that address education, since RFCs deal with rather lower technical layers of Internet.

• RFC- 1941/FYI 002 - Frequently Asked Questions for Schools

Links

RFC Repositories

• Internet FAQ Archives (The subtitle of this archive which also contains the RFCs is "online Education" :)

• Request for comments at The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). I rather suggest to use the link above if you want to browse, This archive is better to search.

How-to

• RFC Editor Information