[1][2] An RFC is authored by individuals or groups of engineers and computer scientists in the form of a memorandum describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems.
[4] The RFC system was invented by Steve Crocker in 1969 to help record unofficial notes on the development of ARPANET.
RFCs have since become official documents of Internet specifications, communications protocols, procedures, and events.
[5] According to Crocker, the documents "shape the Internet's inner workings and have played a significant role in its success," but are not widely known outside the community.
[6] Outside of the Internet community, other documents also called requests for comments have been published, as in U.S. Federal government work, such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The authors of the first RFCs typewrote their work and circulated hard copies among the ARPA researchers.
This less formal style is now typical of Internet Draft documents, the precursor step before being approved as an RFC.
RFC 1, titled "Host Software", was written by Steve Crocker of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and published on April 7, 1969.
[12] Following the expiration of the original ARPANET contract with the U.S. federal government, the Internet Society, acting on behalf of the IETF, contracted with the Networking Division of the University of Southern California (USC) Information Sciences Institute (ISI) to assume the editorship and publishing responsibilities under the direction of the IAB.
[13] Bob Braden took over the role of RFC project lead, while Joyce K. Reynolds continued to be part of the team until October 13, 2006.
[14] A new model was proposed in 2008, refined, and published in August 2009, splitting the task into several roles,[15] including the RFC Series Advisory Group (RSAG).
In August 2019, the format was changed so that new documents can be viewed optimally in devices with varying display sizes.
Together, the serialized RFCs compose a continuous historical record of the evolution of Internet standards and practices.
[24] The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standards authorship accomplished by individuals or small working groups can have important advantages[clarification needed] over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ISO and national standards bodies.
[citation needed] There are five streams of RFCs: IETF, IRTF, IAB, independent submission,[26] and Editorial.
IRTF and independent RFCs generally contain relevant information or experiments for the Internet at large not in conflict with IETF work.
[32] Only the IETF, represented by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), can approve standards-track RFCs.
[33] When an Internet Standard is updated, its STD number stays the same, now referring to a new RFC or set of RFCs.
[34] The Best Current Practice subseries collects administrative documents and other texts which are considered as official rules and not only informational, but which do not affect over the wire data.
If it only defines rules and regulations for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) registries it is less clear; most of these documents are BCPs, but some are on the standards track.
The BCP series also covers technical recommendations for how to practice Internet standards; for instance, the recommendation to use source filtering to make DoS attacks more difficult (RFC 2827: "Network Ingress Filtering: Defeating Denial of Service Attacks which employ IP Source Address Spoofing") is BCP 38.
[39] The Internet Society is referenced on many RFCs prior to RFC4714 as the copyright owner, but it transferred its rights to the IETF Trust.