RFC
termStands for: Request for Comments
The numbered document series in which internet protocols are specified - named a request for comments because the first author had no authority to declare a standard.
Not every RFC is a standard: the series carries proposed standards, informational notes, best current practice, experiments and April Fools jokes, and the status matters more than the number. Anyone can read them for free, which is the difference from most standards bodies and part of why implementations exist. The convention that a specification is discussed in public before it is fixed is the practice the name preserves, and it is why RFC numbers are cited in code comments across the industry.
The series began on 7 April 1969 with RFC 1, 'Host Software', by Steve Crocker, a note about the ARPANET's host software rather than a standard. The status of an RFC, not its number, says what it is. RFC 2026 (BCP 9, October 1996) set the standards track at three levels and named the documents off the track: 'Experimental', 'Informational' and 'Historic'; RFC 6410 (October 2011) cut the track to two, so a specification is now a 'Proposed Standard' or an 'Internet Standard'. Best Current Practice, the BCP subseries, is 'designed to be a way to standardize practices and the results of community deliberations'.
The status of an RFC can change after publication, from Proposed Standard to Internet Standard or from Informational to Historic, and the RFC Editor publishes the list of those changes. Reading one well means checking its header first: the documents it updates or obsoletes, and, on its info page, the ones that have since updated or obsoleted it. A protocol described by an obsoleted RFC is described somewhere newer.
Also known as: Request for Comments