The Request for Comments series is the document line on which the internet’s technical standards have been written since 1969. It began with RFC 1, “Host Software,” written by Steve Crocker on 7 April 1969 as the ARPANET host sites tried to agree on how their machines would communicate. From that first numbered note the series has continued without a break, accumulating thousands of documents that define, describe, and discuss the protocols of the network.
The name was a deliberate act of modesty. Crocker chose “Request for Comments” to signal that the notes were provisional invitations to discussion, not pronouncements from authority. RFC 3, “Documentation Conventions,” set the tone: notes were “encouraged to be timely rather than polished,” any participant at any site could write one, and the minimum length was one sentence. By making it safe to circulate unfinished ideas, the RFC format turned standards-making into an open conversation.
Not every RFC is a standard. The series includes Internet Standards and Proposed Standards, but also Best Current Practices, Informational and Experimental documents, the occasional history or tribute (such as RFC 2468, the memorial for Jon Postel), and even April Fools’ jokes. What unites them is the numbered, permanently archived, freely readable format. Once an RFC is published it is never changed; corrections and revisions appear as new RFCs that obsolete or update the old ones, giving the series a stable, citable history.
For nearly three decades Jon Postel served as the RFC Editor, assigning numbers and shepherding documents through publication. Today the RFC Editor function operates under the auspices of the internet’s standards institutions, and the documents are hosted by the RFC Editor at rfc-editor.org. The IETF produces most modern RFCs through its working groups, but the series remains, as it began, an open and public record.
The durability of the format is itself part of the story. Foundational protocols like the Internet Protocol, TCP, DNS, and SMTP are all defined in RFCs, and a programmer in any era can read the original specification exactly as it was published. Few technical traditions have remained so consistent for so long, and the unbroken numbering from RFC 1 onward is a living thread connecting today’s internet to its first week of existence.