RFC2555 - 30 Years of RFCs

Network Working Group RFCEditor, et al.

Request for Comments: 2555 USC/ISI

Category: Informational 7 April 1999

30 Years of RFCs

Status of this Memo

This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does

not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this

memo is unlimited.

Table of Contents

1. IntrodUCtion.................................................. 2

2. Reflections................................................... 2

3. The First Pebble: Publication of RFC1........................ 3

4. RFCs - The Great Conversation................................. 5

5. Reflecting on 30 years of RFCs................................ 9

6. Favorite RFCs -- The First 30 Years...........................14

7. Security Considerations.......................................15

8. Acknowledgments...............................................15

9. Authors' Addresses............................................15

10. APPENDIX - RFC1..............................................17

11. Full Copyright Statement......................................18

1. Introduction - Robert Braden

Thirty years ago today, the first Request for Comments document,

RFC1, was published at UCLA (FTP://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1.txt).

This was the first of a series that currently contains more than 2500

documents on computer networking, collected, archived, and edited by

Jon Postel for 28 years. Jon has left us, but this 30th anniversary

tribute to the RFCseries is assembled in grateful admiration for his

massive contribution.

The rest of this document contains a brief recollection from the

present RFCEditor Joyce K. Reynolds, followed by recollections from

three pioneers: Steve Crocker who wrote RFC1, Vint Cerf whose long-

range vision continues to guide us, and Jake Feinler who played a key

role in the middle years of the RFCseries.

2. Reflections - Joyce K. Reynolds

A very long time ago when I was dabbling in IP network number and

protocol parameter assignments with Jon Postel, gateways were still

"dumb", the Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) was in its infancy and

TOPS-20 was in its heyday. I was aware of the Request for Comments

(RFCs) document series, with Jon as the RFCEditor. I really didn't

know much of the innerworkings of what the task entailed. It was

Jon's job and he quietly went about publishing documents for the

ARPANET community.

Meanwhile, Jon and I would have meetings in his Office to go over our

specific tasks of the day. One day, I began to notice that a pile of

folders sitting to one side of his desk seemed to be growing. A few

weeks later the pile had turned into two stacks of folders. I asked

him what they were. Apparently, they contained documents for RFC

publication. Jon was trying to keep up with the increasing quantity

of submissions for RFCpublication.

I mentioned to him one day that he should learn to let go of some of

his work load and task it on to other people. He listened intently,

but didn't comment. The very next day, Jon wheeled a computer stand

into my office which was stacked with those documents from his desk

intended for RFCpublication. He had a big Cheshire cat grin on his

face and stated, "I'm letting go!", and walked away.

At the top of the stack was a big red three ring notebook. Inside

contained the "NLS Textbook", which was prepared at ISI by Jon, Lynne

Sims and Linda Sato for use on ISI's TENEX and TOPS-20 systems. Upon

reading its contents, I learned that the NLS system was designed to

help people work with information on a computer. It included a wide

range of tools, from a simple set of commands for writing, reading

and printing documents to sophisticated methods for retrieving and

communication information. NLS was the system Jon used to write,

edit and create the RFCs. Thus began my indoctrination to the RFC

publication series.

Operating systems and computers have changed over the years, but

Jon's perseverance about the consistency of the RFCstyle and quality

of the documents remained true. Unfortunately, Jon did not live to

see the 30th Anniversary of this series that he unfailingly nurtured.

Yet, the spirit of the RFCpublication series continues as we

approach the new millennium. Jon would be proud.

3. The First Pebble: Publication of RFC1 - Steve Crocker

RFC1, "Host Software", issued thirty years ago on April 7, 1969

outlined some thoughts and initial eXPeriments. It was a modest and

entirely forgettable memo, but it has significance because it was

part of a broad initiative whose impact is still with us today.

At the time RFC1 was written, the ARPANET was still under design.

Bolt, Beranek and Newman had won the all-important contract to build

and operate the Interface Message Processors or "IMPs", the

forerunners of the modern routers. They were each the size of a

refrigerator and cost about $100,000 in 1969 dollars.

The network was scheduled to be deployed among the research sites

supported by ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO).

The first four nodes were to be at UCLA, SRI, University of

California, Santa Barbara and University of Utah. The first

installation, at UCLA, was set for September 1, 1969.

Although there had been considerable planning of the topology, leased

lines, modems and IMPs, there was little organization or planning

regarding network applications. It was assumed the research sites

would figure it out. This turned out to be a brilliant management

decision at ARPA.

Previously, in the summer of 1968, a handful of graduate students and

staff members from the four sites were called together to discuss the

forthcoming network. There was only a basic outline. BBN had not

yet won the contract, and there was no technical specification for

the network's operation. At the first meeting, we scheduled future

meetings at each of the other laboratories, thus setting the stage

for today's thrice yearly movable feast. Over the next couple of

years, the group grew substantially and we found ourselves with

overflow crowds of fifty to a hundred people at Network Working Group

meetings. Compared to modern IETF meetings all over the world with

attendance in excess of 1,000 people and several dozen active working

groups, the early Network Working Groups were small and tame, but

they seemed large and only barely manageable at the time. One

tradition that doesn't seem to have changed at all is the spirit of

unrestrained participation in working group meetings.

Our initial group met a handful of times in the summer and fall of

1968 and winter 1969. Our earliest meetings were unhampered by

knowledge of what the network would look like or how it would

interact with the hosts. Depending on your point of view, this

either allowed us or forced us to think about broader and grander

topics. We recognized we would eventually have to get around to

dealing with message formats and other specific details of low-level

protocols, but our first thoughts focused on what applications the

network might support. In our view, the 50 kilobit per second

communication lines being used for the ARPANET seemed slow, and we

worried that it might be hard to provide high-quality interactive

service across the network. I wish we had not been so accurate!

When BBN issued its Host-IMP specification in spring 1969, our

freedom to wander over broad and grand topics ended. Before then,

however, we tried to consider the most general designs and the most

exciting applications. One thought that captured our imagination was

the idea of downloading a small interpretative program at the

beginning of a session. The downloaded program could then control

the interactions and make efficient use of the narrow bandwidth

between the user's local machine and the back-end system the user was

interacting with. Jeff Rulifson at SRI was the prime mover of this

line of thinking, and he took a crack at designing a Decode-Encode

Language (DEL) [RFC5]. Michel Elie, visiting at UCLA from France,

worked on this idea further and published Proposal for a Network

Interchange Language (NIL) [RFC51]. The emergence of Java and

ActiveX in the last few years finally brings those early ideas to

fruition, and we're not done yet. I think we will continue to see

striking advances in combining communication and computing.

I have already suggested that the early RFCs and the associated

Network Working Group laid the foundation for the Internet

Engineering Task Force. Two all-important ASPects of the early work

deserve mention, although they're completely evident to anyone who

participates in the process today. First, the technical direction we

chose from the beginning was an open architecture based on multiple

layers of protocol. We were frankly too scared to imagine that we

could define an all-inclusive set of protocols that would serve

indefinitely. We envisioned a continual process of evolution and

addition, and obviously this is what's happened.

The RFCs themselves also represented a certain sense of fear. After

several months of meetings, we felt obliged to write down our

thoughts. We parceled out the work and wrote the initial batch of

memos. In addition to participating in the technical design, I took

on the administrative function of setting up a simple scheme for

numbering and distributing the notes. Mindful that our group was

informal, junior and unchartered, I wanted to emphasize these notes

were the beginning of a dialog and not an assertion of control.

It's now been thirty years since the first RFCs were issued. At the

time, I believed the notes were temporary and the entire series would

die off in a year or so once the network was running. Thanks to the

spectacular efforts of the entire community and the perseverance and

dedication of Jon Postel, Joyce Reynolds and their crew, the humble

series of Requests for Comments evolved and thrived. It became the

mainstay for sharing technical designs in the Internet community and

the archetype for other communities as well. Like the Sorcerer's

Apprentice, we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams and our worst

fears.

4. RFCs - The Great Conversation - Vint Cerf

A long time ago, in a network far, far away...

Considering the movement of planet Earth around the Sun and the Sun

around the Milky Way galaxy, that first network IS far away in the

relativistic sense. It takes 200 million years for the Sun to make

its way around the galaxy, so thirty years is only an eyeblink on the

galactic clock. But what a marvelous thirty years it has been! The

RFCs document the odyssey of the ARPANET and, later, the Internet, as

its creators and netizens explore, discover, build, re-build, argue

and resolve questions of design, concepts and applications of

computer networking.

It has been ultimately fascinating to watch the transformation of the

RFCs themselves from their earliest, tentative dialog form to today's

much more structured character. The growth of applications such as

email, bulletin boards and the world wide web have had much to do

with that transformation, but so has the scale and impact of the

Internet on our social and economic fabric. As the Internet has taken

on greater economic importance, the standards documented in the RFCs

have become more important and the RFCs more formal. The dialog has

moved to other venues as technology has changed and the working

styles have adapted.

Hiding in the history of the RFCs is the history of human

institutions for achieving cooperative work. And also hiding in that

history are some heroes that haven't been acknowledged. On this

thirtieth anniversary, I am grateful for the opportunity to

acknowledge some of them. It would be possible to fill a book with

such names - mostly of the authors of the RFCs, but as this must be a

brief contribution, I want to mention four of them in particular:

Steve Crocker, Jon Postel, Joyce K. Reynolds and Bob Braden.

Steve Crocker is a modest man and would likely never make the

observation that while the contents of RFC1 might have been entirely

forgettable, the act of writing RFC1 was indicative of the brave and

ultimately clear-visioned leadership that he brought to a journey

into the unknown. There were no guides in those days - computer

networking was new and few historical milestones prepared us for what

lay ahead. Steve's ability to accommodate a diversity of views, to

synthesize them into coherence and, like Tom Sawyer, to persuade

others that they wanted to devote their time to working on the

problems that lay in the path of progress can be found in the early

RFCs and in the Network Working Group meetings that Steve led.

In the later work on Internet, I did my best to emulate the framework

that Steve invented: the International Network Working Group (INWG)

and its INWG Notes, the Internet Working Group and its Internet

Experiment Notes (IENs) were brazen knock-offs of Steve's

organizational vision and style.

It is douBTful that the RFCs would be the quality body of material

they are today were it not for Jonathan Postel's devotion to them

from the start. Somehow, Jon knew, even thirty years ago that it

might be important to document what was done and why, to say nothing

of trying to capture the debate for the benefit of future networkers

wondering how we'd reached some of the conclusions we did (and

probably shake their heads...).

Jon was the network's Boswell, but it was his devotion to quality and

his remarkable mix of technical and editing skills that permeate many

of the more monumental RFCs that dealt with what we now consider the

TCP/IP standards. Many bad design decisions were re-worked thanks to

Jon's stubborn determination that we all get it "right" - as the

editor, he simply would not let something go out that didn't meet his

personal quality filter. There were times when we moaned and

complained, hollered and harangued, but in the end, most of the time,

Jon was right and we knew it.

Joyce K. Reynolds was at Jon's side for much of the time that Jon was

the RFCeditor and as has been observed, they functioned in unison

like a matched pair of superconducting electrons - and

superconductors they were of the RFCseries. 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 RFCwritten 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 RFCsaga 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, RFC1122 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 Satellite

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 RFCseries. 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 RFCseries, 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.

5. Reflecting on 30 years of RFCs - Jake Feinler

By now we know that the first RFCwas published on April 7, 1969 by

Steve Crocker. It was entitled "Host Software". The second RFCwas

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". RFC2 was a response to suggestions made in RFC1-

-and so the dialog began.

Steve proposed 2 experiments in RFC1:

"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".

RFC2, issued 2 days later, proposed detailed procedures for

connecting to the NLS documentation system across the network. Steve

may think RFC1 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!)

RFC1 was, I believe, a paper document. RFC2 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.

RFC3, 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".

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 RFCbe 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 RFCwas 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 RFC3!

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 document

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 with

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 RFCby 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 and

others, who served on the NWG or authored RFCs, an extreme debt of

gratitude for their contributions and dedication.

At no time was the controversy worse than it was when DoD adopted

TCP/IP as its official host-to-host protocols for communications

networks. In March 1982, a military directive was issued by the

Under Secretary of Defense, Richard DeLauer. It simply stated that

the use of TCP and IP was mandatory for DoD communications networks.

Bear in mind that a military directive is not something you discuss -

the time for discussion is long over when one is issued. Rather a

military directive is something you DO. The ARPANET and its

successor, the Defense Data Network, were military networks, so the

gauntlet was down and the race was on to prove whether the new

technology could do the job on a real operational network. You have

no idea what chaos and controversy that little 2-page directive

caused on the network. (But that's a story for another time.)

However, that directive, along with RFCs 791 and 793 (IP and TCP)

gave the RFCs as a group of technical documents stature and

recognition throughout the world. (And yes, TCP/IP certainly did do

the job!)

Jon and I were both government contractors, so of course followed the

directions of our contracting officers. He was mainly under contract

to ARPA, whereas the NIC was mainly under contract to DCA. BBN was

another key contractor. For the most part we all worked as a team.

However, there was frequent turnover in military personnel assigned

to both the ARPANET and the DDN, and we all collaborated to try to

get all the new participants informed as to what was available to

them when they joined the network. We also tried to foster

collaboration rather than duplication of effort, when it was

appropriate. The NWG (or IETF as it is now known) and the RFCs

became the main vehicles for interagency collaboration as the DoD

protocols began to be used on other government, academic, and

commercial networks.

I left SRI and the NIC project in 1989. At that time there were

about 30,000 hosts on what was becoming known as the Internet, and

just over a 1000 RFCs had been issued. Today there are millions of

hosts on the Internet, and we are well past the 3000 mark for RFCs.

It was great fun to be a part of what turned out to be a

technological revolution. It is heartwarming to see that the RFCs

are still being issued by the IETF, and that they are still largely

based on ideas that have been discussed and implemented; that the

concepts of online working groups and distributed information servers

are a way of life; that those little "links" (officially known as

hypertext) have revolutionized the delivery of documents; and that

the government, academia, and business are now all playing the same

game for fun and profit. (Oh yes, I'm happy to see that Steve's idea

for integrated text and graphics has finally come to fruition,

although that work took a little longer than 2 days.)

6. Favorite RFCs -- The First 30 Years - Celeste Anderson

Five years ago, Jon Postel and I had wanted to publish a 25th RFC

anniversary book, but, alas, we were both too busy working on other

projects. We determined then that we should commemorate the

thirtieth anniversary by collecting together thirty "RFCEditors'

Choice" RFCs based on original ideas expressed throughout the first

30 years of their existence.

Jon's untimely death in October 1998 prevented us from completing

this goal. We did, however, start to put online some of the early

RFCs, including RFC1. We weren't sure whether we were going to try

to make them look as close to the typewritten originals as possible,

or to make a few adjustments and format them according to the latest

RFCstyle. Those of you who still have your copies of RFC1 will

note the concessions we made to NROFF the online version. The hand-

drawn diagrams of the early RFCs also present interesting challenges

for conversion into ASCII format.

There are still opportunities to assist the RFCEditor to put many of

the early RFCs online. Check the URL:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-online.Html for more information on this

project.

In memory of Jon, we are compiling a book for publication next year

of "Favorite RFCs -- The First 30 Years".

We have set up a web interface at

http://www.rfc-editor.org/voterfc.html

for tabulating votes and recording the responses. We will accept

email as well. Please send your email responses to: voterfc@isi.edu.

We prefer votes accompanied by explanations for the vote choice.

We reserve the right to add to the list several RFCs that Jon Postel

had already selected for the collection. Voting closes December 31,

1999.

7. Security Considerations

Security issues are not discussed in this commemorative RFC.

8. Acknowledgments

Thank you to all the authors who contributed to this RFCon short

notice. Thanks also to Fred Baker and Eve Schooler who goaded us

into action. A special acknowledgment to Eitetsu Baumgardner, a

student at USC, who NROFFed this document and who assisted in the

formatting of RFCs 1, 54, and 62, converting hand-drawn diagrams into

ASCII format.

9. Authors' Addresses

Robert Braden

USC/Information Sciences Institute

4676 Admiralty Way #1001

Marina del Rey, CA 90292

Phone: +1 310-822-1511

Fax: +1 310 823 6714

EMail:

braden@isi.edu

Joyce K. Reynolds

USC/Information Sciences Institute

4676 Admiralty Way #1001

Marina del Rey, CA 90292

Phone: +1 310-822-1511

Fax: +1 310-823-6714

EMail: jkrey@isi.edu

Steve Crocker

Steve Crocker Associates, LLC

5110 Edgemoor Lane

Bethesda, MD 20814

Phone: +1 301-654-4569

Fax: +1 202-478-0458

EMail: crocker@mbl.edu

Vint Cerf

MCI

EMail: vcerf@mci.net

Jake Feinler

SRI Network Information Center

1972-1989

EMail: feinler@juno.com

Celeste Anderson

USC/Information Sciences Institute

4676 Admiralty Way #1001

Marina del Rey, CA 90292

Phone: +1 310-822-1511

Fax: +1 310-823-6714

EMail: celeste@isi.edu

10. APPENDIX - RFC1

The cover page said at the top:

"Network Working Group

Request for Comments"

and then came an internal UCLA distribution list:

V. Cerf, S. Crocker, M. Elie, G. Estrin, G. Fultz, A. Gomez,

D. Karas, L. Kleinrock, J. Postel, M. Wingfield, R. Braden,

and W. Kehl.

followed by an "Off Campus" distribution list:

A. Bhushan (MIT), S. Carr (Utah), G. Cole (SDC), W. English (SRI),

K. Fry (Mitre), J. Heafner (Rand), R. Kahn (BBN), L. Roberts (ARPA),

P. Rovner (MIT), and R. Stoughton (UCSB).

The following title page had

"Network Working Group

Request for Comments: 1"

at the top, and then:

HOST SOFTWARE

STEVE CROCKER

7 APRIL 1969

11. Full Copyright Statement

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished

to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise

explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied,

published and distributed, in whole or in part, without

restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice

and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative

works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any

way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the

Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed

for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the

procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards

process must be followed, or as required to translate it into

languages other than English.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not

be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

This document and the information contained herein is provided on

an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET

ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR

IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF

THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED

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