A Request for Comments (RFC), in the context of Internet governance, is a type of publication from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Society (ISOC), usually describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems.
Almost every April Fools' Day (1 April) since 1989, the Internet RFC Editor has published one or more humorous Request for Comments (RFC) documents, following in the path blazed by the June 1973 RFC 527 called ARPAWOCKY, a parody of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky". The following list also includes humorous RFCs published on other dates.
A Compact Representation of IPv6 Addresses, [14] Informational.
The Twelve Networking Truths, [15] Informational.
An Experimental Encapsulation of IP Datagrams on Top of ATM, [16] Informational.
Suggested Additional MIME Types for Associating Documents, [17] Informational.
RITA -- The Reliable Internetwork Troubleshooting Agent, [19] Informational.
Management of IP numbers by peg-dhcp, [20] Informational.
IETF Identification and Security Guidelines, [21] Informational.
Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0), [22] Informational. Updated by RFC 7168 in 2014.
Requirements for Morality Sections in Routing Area Drafts, [36] Informational.
UTF-9 and UTF-18 Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode, [37] Informational.
The Transmission of IP Datagrams over the Semaphore Flag Signaling System (SFSS), [39] Informational.
IANA Considerations for Three Letter Acronyms, [42] Informational.
IPv6 over Social Networks, [43] Experimental.
The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol for Tea Efflux Appliances (HTCPCP-TEA), [52] Informational.
ext-KeyUsage
. When 'true', the private key has been shared; when 'false', the signer abstains from commenting on whether or not sharing has taken place.The Arte of ASCII: Or, An True and Accurate Representation of an Menagerie of Thynges Fabulous and Wonderful in Ye Forme of Character, [59] Informational.
The Internationalized Deliberately Unreadable Network NOtation (I-DUNNO), [65] Experimental.
The RFC Editor accepts submission of properly formatted April Fools' Day RFCs from the general public, and considers them for publication in the same year if received at least two weeks prior to April 1st. [79] [80] This practice of publishing April Fool's Day RFCs is specifically acknowledged in the instructions memo for RFC authors, with a tongue-in-cheek note saying: "Note that in past years the RFC Editor has sometimes published serious documents with April 1 dates. Readers who cannot distinguish satire by reading the text may have a future in marketing." [79]
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label such as 192.0.2.1 that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface identification, and location addressing.
The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a supporting protocol in the Internet protocol suite. It is used by network devices, including routers, to send error messages and operational information indicating success or failure when communicating with another IP address. For example, an error is indicated when a requested service is not available or that a host or router could not be reached. ICMP differs from transport protocols such as TCP and UDP in that it is not typically used to exchange data between systems, nor is it regularly employed by end-user network applications.
Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the first version of the Internet Protocol (IP) as a standalone specification. It is one of the core protocols of standards-based internetworking methods in the Internet and other packet-switched networks. IPv4 was the first version deployed for production on SATNET in 1982 and on the ARPANET in January 1983. It is still used to route most Internet traffic today, even with the ongoing deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), its successor.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and was intended to replace IPv4. In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF, which subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017.
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.
In computer networking, the maximum transmission unit (MTU) is the size of the largest protocol data unit (PDU) that can be communicated in a single network layer transaction. The MTU relates to, but is not identical to the maximum frame size that can be transported on the data link layer, e.g., Ethernet frame.
Intermediate System to Intermediate System is a routing protocol designed to move information efficiently within a computer network, a group of physically connected computers or similar devices. It accomplishes this by determining the best route for data through a packet switching network.
A multicast address is a logical identifier for a group of hosts in a computer network that are available to process datagrams or frames intended to be multicast for a designated network service. Multicast addressing can be used in the link layer, such as Ethernet multicast, and at the internet layer for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) or Version 6 (IPv6) multicast.
The Internet Stream Protocol (ST) is a family of experimental protocols first defined in Internet Experiment Note IEN-119 in 1979, and later substantially revised in RFC 1190 (ST-II) and RFC 1819 (ST2+). The protocol uses the version number 5 in the version field of the Internet Protocol header, but was never known as IPv5. The successor to IPv4 was thus named IPv6 to eliminate any possible confusion about the actual protocol in use.
The Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP), or simply Neighbor Discovery (ND), is a protocol of the Internet protocol suite used with Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). It operates at the internet layer of the Internet model, and is responsible for gathering various information required for network communication, including the configuration of local connections and the domain name servers and gateways.
In the Internet addressing architecture, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) have reserved various Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for special purposes.
Path MTU Discovery (PMTUD) is a standardized technique in computer networking for determining the maximum transmission unit (MTU) size on the network path between two Internet Protocol (IP) hosts, usually with the goal of avoiding IP fragmentation. PMTUD was originally intended for routers in Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4). However, all modern operating systems use it on endpoints. In IPv6, this function has been explicitly delegated to the end points of a communications session. As an extension to the standard path MTU discovery, a technique called Packetization Layer Path MTU Discovery works without support from ICMP.
The internet layer is a group of internetworking methods, protocols, and specifications in the Internet protocol suite that are used to transport network packets from the originating host across network boundaries; if necessary, to the destination host specified by an IP address. The internet layer derives its name from its function facilitating internetworking, which is the concept of connecting multiple networks with each other through gateways.
An IPv6 transition mechanism is a technology that facilitates the transitioning of the Internet from the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) infrastructure in use since 1983 to the successor addressing and routing system of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). As IPv4 and IPv6 networks are not directly interoperable, transition technologies are designed to permit hosts on either network type to communicate with any other host.
An Internet Protocol version 6 address is a numeric label that is used to identify and locate a network interface of a computer or a network node participating in a computer network using IPv6. IP addresses are included in the packet header to indicate the source and the destination of each packet. The IP address of the destination is used to make decisions about routing IP packets to other networks.
An IPv6 packet is the smallest message entity exchanged using Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Packets consist of control information for addressing and routing and a payload of user data. The control information in IPv6 packets is subdivided into a mandatory fixed header and optional extension headers. The payload of an IPv6 packet is typically a datagram or segment of the higher-level transport layer protocol, but may be data for an internet layer or link layer instead.
NAT64 is an IPv6 transition mechanism that facilitates communication between IPv6 and IPv4 hosts by using a form of network address translation (NAT). The NAT64 gateway is a translator between IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, for which function it needs at least one IPv4 address and an IPv6 network segment comprising a 32-bit address space. The "well-known prefix" reserved for this service is 64:ff9b::/96.
IPv4 Residual Deployment (4rd) is an IPv6 transition mechanism for Internet service providers for deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), while maintaining IPv4 service to customers. The protocol and sample applications are specified in RFC 7600.
Rémi Després is a French engineer and entrepreneur known for his contributions on data networking.