The term "Request for Comments" is often used by organizations seeking input from the public about a policy or service. For example, when the Highway Department considers installing stoplights, the department will solicit comments from the people affected by the change.
In the realm of the Internet, the acronym RFC refers to a specific series of documents that began in 1969 when UCLA professor Steve Crocker issued an RFC0001 titled "Host Software" which concerned the logic needed for a host to control switches on a computer network.
The first RFCs were clearly intended to start conversations about technical issues faced by the engineers who were working on network technology.
The RFC system soon transformed into a system for publishing industry standards. The system fell under the control of the Internet Engineering Task Force upon its creation in 1986.
This RFC series stands out as a historically important collection of documents which follows the development of Internet technology. The public can access the RFC series on the web site RFC-Editor.org.
RFC1000 by J. Reynolds, J. Postel, and Stephen D. Crocker provides insight into the early growth of the RFC Series. RFC8700 discusses the first 50 years of the series.
The latest RFC had the number RFC9188. It was published in February 2022. The RFC discusses protocols to allow devices to connect to multiple networks at the transport layer.
My guess is that the internet will be declared complete with the IETF reaches RFC9999 as the RFC system is rapidly running out of reference numbers.
The first thing I noticed when I first accessed the "Request for Comments" series some decades ago was the conspicuous lack of comments. I also couldn't help but notice that the RFC-Editor did not have any publicly accessible editorial functions.
Since the RFCs came from a single source, reading the RFCs might give the impression that there was one monolithic source that created the Internet.
The truth, of course, is that data communications was already a huge industry in 1969. ARPANET and the the IETF were just one of a large number of organizations interested in developing the technology.
ARPANET received its funding from the US Military. Because it received government funding it was positioned to establish itself as a leading standards.
Which Came First: The Standards or the Tech?
Standards organizations are usually not on the cutting edge of research. Standards organizations usually cut into the dance when technologies move from research and into development.
While historians are bound to revere the RFCs as historically important documents. It is important to remember that they appeared in robust markets with competing systems.
Standards and the Market
Standards organizations are often in the position where they can choose the winner and losers in a market. When a standards organization favors the technology of a company with insider connections, that company will have a distinct advantage over the competition.
In some cases standards organizations will improve market competition by defining the foundations for the market. In other cases, the decisions from standards organizations might have a detrimental impact by choosing the technology of one group over another.
Standards can have profound impacts on the market.
We can see this impact in the rise of the Oauth standard. There were many competing approaches to user authentication in 2006. Blain Cook worked on Twitter OpenID in 2006. The IETF held an OAuth discussion group in 2007. The IETF published RFC5849 which established Twitter's approach to authentication as a standard.
The standard gave Twitter a competitive edge in the market.
Personally, I think that there were better approaches to user authentication than Oauth. Notably, Twitter's implementation of oauth is far too centralized for my taste. Twitter has a nasty history of selling user information and I feel squimish whenever I encounter a "log in with Twitter" button.
HiveSigner.com (originally SteemConnect) created an oauth implementation for this and that blockchain.
RFCs and Blockchain Development
The RFC structure set the standard for encryption used by web browsers and internet servers.
I could not find any RFCs dealing directly with blockchain development. Blockchain development appears to follows the idea that code is king. So while the RFCs provide insight into standards based development, I personally prefer the open market approach of blockchain development.
The Picture
I couldn't come up with a good image for the post; So, I took a picture of a well groomed shrub.
