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RFC 2555 30 Years of RFCs 7 April 1999 Joyce K. Reynolds was at Jon's side for much of the time that Jon was the RFC editor and as has been observed, they functioned in unison like a matched pair of superconducting electrons - and superconductors they were of the RFC series. For all practical purposes, it was impossible to tell which of the two had edited any particular RFC. Joyce's passion for quality has matched Jon's and continues to this day. And she has the same subtle, puckish sense of humor that emerged at unexpected moments in Jon's stewardship. One example that affected me personally was Joyce's assignment of number 2468 to the RFC written to remember Jon. I never would have thought of that, and it was done so subtly that it didn't even ring a bell until someone sent me an email asking whether this was a coincidence. In analog to classical mystery stories, the editor did it. Another unsung hero in the RFC saga is Bob Braden - another man whose modesty belies contributions of long-standing and monumental proportions. It is my speculation that much of the quality of the RFCs can be traced to consultations among the USC/ISI team, including Jon, Joyce and Bob among others. Of course, RFC 1122 and 1123 stand as two enormous contributions to the clarity of the Internet standards. For that task alone, Bob deserves tremendous appreciation, but he has led the End-to-End Research Group for many years out of which has come some of the most important RFCs that refine our understanding of optimal implementation of the protocols, especially TCP. When the RFCs were first produced, they had an almost 19th century character to them - letters exchanged in public debating the merits of various design choices for protocols in the ARPANET. As email and bulletin boards emerged from the fertile fabric of the network, the far-flung participants in this historic dialog began to make increasing use of the online medium to carry out the discussion - reducing the need for documenting the debate in the RFCs and, in some respects, leaving historians somewhat impoverished in the process. RFCs slowly became conclusions rather than debates. Jon permitted publication of items other than purely technical documents in this series. Hence one finds poetry, humor (especially the April 1 RFCs which are as funny today as they were when they were published), and reprints of valuable reference material mixed into the documents prepared by the network working groups. In the early 1970s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency was conducting several parallel research programs into packet switching technology, after the stunning success of this idea in the ARPANET. Among these were the Packet Radio Network, the Atlantic Packet Satellite Network and the Internet projects. These each spawned note series akin to but parallel to the RFCs. PRNET Notes, ARPA SatelliteRFC Editor, et al. Informational [Page 7] RFC 2555 30 Years of RFCs 7 April 1999 System Notes (bearing the obvious and unfortunate acronym...), Internet Experiment Notes (IENs), and so on. After the Internet protocols were mandated to be used on the ARPANET and other DARPA- sponsored networks in January 1983 (SATNET actually converted before that), Internet- related notes were merged into the RFC series. For a time, after the Internet project seemed destined to bear fruit, IENs were published in parallel with RFCs. A few voices, Danny Cohen's in particular (who was then at USC/ISI with Jon Postel) suggested that separate series were a mistake and that it would be a lot easier to maintain and to search a single series. Hindsight seems to have proven Danny right as the RFC series, with its dedicated editors, seems to have borne the test of time far better than its more ephemeral counterparts. As the organizations associated with Internet continued to evolve, one sees the RFCs adapting to changed circumstances. Perhaps the most powerful influence can be seen from the evolution of the Internet Engineering Task Force from just one of several task forces whose chairpersons formed the Internet Activities Board to the dominant, global Internet Standards development organization, managed by its Internet Engineering Steering Group and operating under the auspices of the Internet Society. The process of producing "standards-track" RFCs is now far more rigorous than it once was, carries far more impact on a burgeoning industry, and has spawned its own, relatively informal "Internet Drafts" series of short-lived documents forming the working set of the IETF working groups. The dialogue that once characterized the early RFCs has given way to thrice-annual face-to-face meetings of the IETF and enormous quantities of email, as well as a growing amount of group-interactive work through chat rooms, shared white boards and even more elaborate multicast conferences. The parallelism and the increasing quantity of transient dialogue surrounding the evolution of the Internet has made the task of technology historians considerably more difficult, although one can sense a counter-balancing through the phenomenal amount of information accumulating in the World Wide Web. Even casual searches often turn up some surprising and sometimes embarrassing old memoranda - a number of which were once paper but which have been rendered into bits by some enterprising volunteer. The RFCs, begun so tentatively thirty years ago, and persistently edited and maintained by Jon Postel and his colleagues at USC/ISI, tell a remarkable story of exploration, achievement, and dedication by a growing mass of internauts who will not sleep until the Internet truly is for everyone. It is in that spirit that this remembrance is offered, and in particular, in memory of our much loved colleague, Jon Postel, without whose personal commitment to this archive, the story might have been vastly different and not nearly as remarkable.RFC Editor, et al. Informational [Page 8] RFC 2555 30 Years of RFCs 7 April 19995. Reflecting on 30 years of RFCs - Jake Feinler By now we know that the first RFC was published on April 7, 1969 by Steve Crocker. It was entitled "Host Software". The second RFC was published on April 9, 1969 by Bill Duvall of SRI International (then called Stanford Research Institute or SRI), and it too was entitled "Host Software". RFC 2 was a response to suggestions made in RFC 1- -and so the dialog began. Steve proposed 2 experiments in RFC 1: "1) SRI is currently modifying their on-line retrieval system which will be the major software component of the Network Documentation Center [or The SRI NIC as it soon came to be known] so that it can be modified with Model 35 teletypes. The control of the teletypes will be written in DEL [Decode-Encode Language]. All sites will write DEL compilers and use NLS [SRI Doug Engelbart's oNLine System] through the DEL program". "2) SRI will write a DEL front end for full NLS, graphics included. UCLA and UTAH will use NLS with graphics". RFC 2, issued 2 days later, proposed detailed procedures for connecting to the NLS documentation system across the network. Steve may think RFC 1 was an "entirely forgettable" document; however, as an information person, I beg to differ with him. The concepts presented in this first dialog were mind boggling, and eventually led to the kind of network interchange we are all using on the web today. (Fortunately, we have graduated beyond DEL and Model 35 teletypes!) RFC 1 was, I believe, a paper document. RFC 2 was produced online via the SRI NLS system and was entered into the online SRI NLS Journal. However, it was probably mailed to each recipient via snail mail by the NIC, as email and the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) had not yet been invented. RFC 3, again by Steve Crocker, was entitled, "Documentation Conventions;" and we see that already the need for a few ground rules was surfacing. More ground-breaking concepts were introduced in this RFC. It stated that: "The Network Working Group (NWG) is concerned with the HOST software, the strategies for using the network, and the initial experiments with the network. Documentation of the NWG's effort is through notes such as this. Notes may be produced at any site by anybody and included in this series".RFC Editor, et al. Informational [Page 9] RFC 2555 30 Years of RFCs 7 April 1999 It goes on to say: "The content of a NWG note may be any thought, suggestion, etc.related to the Host software or other aspect of the network. Notes are encouraged to be timely rather than polished. Philosophical positions without examples or other specifics, specific suggestions or implementation techniques without introductory or background explanation, and explicit questions without any attempted answers are all acceptable. The minimum length for a NWG note is one sentence". "These standards (or lack of them) are stated explicitly for two reasons. First, there is a tendency to view a written statement as discussion of considerably less than authoritative ideas. Second, there is a natural hesitancy to publish something unpolished, and we hope to ease this inhibition". Steve asked that this RFC be sent to a distribution list consisting of: Bob Kahn, BBN Larry Roberts, ARPA Steve Carr, UCLA Jeff Rulifson, UTAH Ron Stoughton, UCSB Steve Crocker, UCLA Thus by the time the third RFC was published, many of the concepts of how to do business in this new networking environment had been established--there would be a working group of implementers (NWG) actually discussing and trying things out; ideas were to be free- wheeling; communications would be informal; documents would be deposited (online when possible) at the NIC and distributed freely to members of the working group; and anyone with something to contribute could come to the party. With this one document a swath was instantly cut through miles of red tape and pedantic process. Was this radical for the times or what! And we were only up to RFC 3! Many more RFCs followed and the SRI NLS Journal became the bibliographic search service of the ARPANET. It differed from other search services of the time in one important respect: when you got a "hit" searching the journal online, not only did you get a citation telling you such things as the author and title; you got an associated little string of text called a "link". If you used a command called "jump to link", voila! you got the full text of the document. You did not have to go to the library, or send an order off to an issuing agency to get a copy of the document, as was the custom with other search services of the time. The whole documentRFC Editor, et al. Informational [Page 10] RFC 2555 30 Years of RFCs 7 April 1999 itself was right there immediately! Also, any document submitted to the journal could not be changed. New versions could be submitted, and these superceded old versions, but again the new versions could not be changed. Each document was given a unique identifying number, so it was easy to track. These features were useful in a fast-moving environment. Documents often went through several drafts before they were finally issued as an RFC or other official document, and being able to track versions was very useful. The SRI NLS Journal was revolutionary for the time; however, access to it online presented several operational problems. Host computers were small and crowded, and the network was growing by leaps and bounds; so connections had to be timed out and broken to give everyone a chance at access. Also, the rest of the world was still a paper world (and there were no scanners or laser printers, folks!), so the NIC still did a brisk business sending out paper documents to requestors. By 1972 when I became Principal Investigator for the NIC project, the ARPANET was growing rapidly, and more and more hosts were being attached to it. Each host was required to have a technical contact known as the Technical Liaison, and most of the Liaison were also members of the NWG. Each Liaison was sent a set of documents by the NIC called "functional documents" which included the Protocol Handbook (first issued by BBN and later published by the NIC.) The content of the Protocol Handbook was made up of key RFCs and a document called "BBN 1822" which specified the Host-to-Imp protocol. The NWG informed the NIC as to which documents should be included in the handbook; and the NIC assembled, published, and distributed the book. Alex McKenzie of BBN helped the NIC with the first version of the handbook, but soon a young fellow, newly out of grad school, named Jon Postel joined the NWG and became the NIC's contact and ARPA's spokesperson for what should be issued in the Protocol Handbook. No one who is familiar with the RFCs can think of them without thinking of Dr. Jonathan Postel. He was "Mister RFC" to most of us. Jon worked at SRI in the seventies and had the office next to mine. We were both members of Doug Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center. Not only was Jon a brilliant computer scientist, he also cared deeply about the process of disseminating information and establishing a methodology for working in a networking environment. We often had conversations way into the wee hours talking about ways to do this "right". The network owes Jon a debt of gratitude for his dedication to the perpetuation of the RFCs. His work, along withRFC Editor, et al. Informational [Page 11] RFC 2555 30 Years of RFCs 7 April 1999 that of his staff, the NWG, the IETF, the various NICs, and CNRI to keep this set of documents viable over the years was, and continues to be, a labor of love. Jon left SRI in 1976 to join USC-ISI, but by that time the die was cast, and the RFCs, NWG, Liaison, and the NIC were part of the network's way of doing business. However, the SRI NLS Journal system was becoming too big for its host computer and could not handle the number of users trying to access it. Email and FTP had been implemented by now, so the NIC developed methodology for delivering information to users via distributed information servers across the network. A user could request an RFC by email from his host computer and have it automatically delivered to his mailbox. Users could also purchase hardcopy subscriptions to the RFCs and copies of the Protocol Handbook, if they did not have network access. The NIC worked with Jon, ARPA, DCA, NSF, other NICs, and other agencies to have secondary reference sets of RFCs easily accessible to implementers throughout the world. The RFCs were also shared freely with official standards bodies, manufacturers and vendors, other working groups, and universities. None of the RFCs were ever restricted or classified. This was no mean feat when you consider that they were being funded by DoD during the height of the Cold War. Many of us worked very hard in the early days to establish the RFCs as the official set of technical notes for the development of the Internet. This was not an easy job. There were suggestions for many parallel efforts and splinter groups. There were naysayers all along the way because this was a new way of doing things, and the ARPANET was "coloring outside the lines" so to speak. Jon, as Editor-in- Chief was criticized because the RFCs were not issued by an "official" standards body, and the NIC was criticized because it was not an "official" document issuing agency. We both strived to marry the new way of doing business with the old, and fortunately were usually supported by our government sponsors, who themselves were breaking new ground. Many RFCs were the end result of months of heated discussion and implementation. Authoring one of them was not for the faint of heart. Feelings often ran high as to what was the "right" way to go. Heated arguments sometimes ensued. Usually they were confined to substance, but sometimes they got personal. Jon would often step in and arbitrate. Eventually the NWG or the Sponsors had to say, "It's a wrap. Issue a final RFC". Jon, as Editor-in-Chief of the RFCs, often took merciless flak from those who wanted to continue discussing and implementing, or those whose ideas were left on the cutting room floor. Somehow he always managed to get past these controversies with style and grace and move on. We owe him andRFC Editor, et al. Informational [Page 12] RFC 2555 30 Years of RFCs 7 April 1999⌨️ 快捷键说明
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