When Americans celebrate the gunpowder-powered birth of their country, they do it by blowing things up -- but these days, they blow up things in the sky instead of other people.
When the Internet's founding engineers celebrate the birth of the process for standardizing the network's pervasive plumbing, they pull out their own form of celebratory gunpowder.
To hail the renowned Request for Comments (RFC), a document process central to the success of Internet standards that was later adopted by other industries, the Net's founding engineers have invoked the RFC itself for the ceremony.
"It's now been 30 years since the first RFCs were issued," writes Steve Crocker, author of the first RFC. Crocker is one of the authors of Wednesday's RFC 2555, entitled "30 Years of RFCs."
"At the time, I believed the notes were temporary and the entire series would die off in a year or so once the network was running. Thanks to the spectacular efforts of the entire community and the perseverance and dedication of [Net mainstay and RFC Editor] Jon Postel, [current RFC Editor] Joyce Reynolds, and their crew, the humble series of requests for comments evolved and thrived."
According to Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Crocker volunteered to take the meeting notes at an early Arpanet meeting. To avoid sounding too declarative, he labeled the note "Request for Comments" and sent it out.
The RFC became the key mechanism for sharing technical designs in the Internet community and the archetype for other communities as well, Crocker wrote.
Request for Comments submissions to the Net standards body, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), typically proposed standards for various plumbing specs of the now-ubiquitous network of networks.
The documents discuss computer communication issues such as networking protocols, procedures, programs, and concepts. If a technical RFC gained enough interest, it evolved into an Internet standard.
The RFC document editing process originated with the late Net pioneer, Jon Postel.
But as with RFC 2555, the documents also let the engineering community stray from the technical into opinion, reminiscence, and sometimes humor.
"Thirty years ago today, the first Request for Comments document, RFC 1, was published at UCLA," reads the introduction to RFC 2555. "This was the first of a series that currently contains more than 2,500 documents on computer networking, collected, archived, and edited by Jon Postel for 28 years.
"Jon has left us, but this 30th anniversary tribute to the RFC series is assembled in grateful admiration for his massive contribution."
That introduction is followed by a series of recollections about the RFC and Postel. Present RFC Editor Joyce K. Reynolds, Steve Crocker, Jake Feinler, and current MCI exec Vint Cerf all chime in on this oddly named, and often dry documentation process.
