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.