Request for Comments
A Request for Comments, or RFC for short, is one of a series of documents about the Internet, mostly technical, but some about policy issues. Some - but not all - are formal Internet standards, which set the engineering specifications for the internals of the Internet. The series was started in 1969 (before the Internet existed, when its predecessor, the ARPANET, was just being started).
Most RFCs, including all formal Internet standards, are produced by the IETF. A document can also be submitted to the RFC Editor by anyone (after being published as an Internet Draft), but it is up to the RFC editor (who usually checks with the IETF) whether or not to accept it. Eventually, if it gains enough interest, it may evolve into an Internet standard.
Each RFC is designated by an RFC number. Once published, an RFC never changes (although there are now errata sheets for them). Modifications to an original RFC are assigned a new RFC number.
Some examples :
- SMTP ["Simple Mail Transfer Protocol". Was RFC 821 (STANDARD), Obsoleted by RFC 2821 (PROPOSED STANDARD)]
- HTTP ["Hypertext Transfer Protocol" -- HTTP/1.1 RFC 2616]
- BGP-4 ["A Border Gateway Protocol 4" (BGP-4) RFC 4271]