[ih] Today’s Internet Still Relies on an ARPANET-Era Protocol: The Request for Comments (Steve Crocker)

[Vint Cerf]

early on, the comments came back as RFCs. Then came email so less of the
conversation was captured in RFCs.
then came Internet Drafts which highlighted conversation again.
v


On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 6:12 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Thanks, Geoff, interesting article...
>
> While the RFC has been enduring, I've always wondered -- where are all
> the Comments in response to those thousands of RFCs that Requested them?
>
> Is there some "form" site somewhere where each RFC appears when
> published and has a "Comments" section to collect and preserve the
> Comments.   That kind of thing is pervasive today on all sorts of news
> sites, blogs, etc.   But IMHO the RFCs have somehow always been ignoring
> the Cs they Request.
>
> I recall writing only several RFCs, but comments typically came back via
> email discussions.   Sometimes for years.  I fear most of that aspect of
> Internet History, the comments and discussions, has been lost.   I
> wonder if the long-standing "technology" of RFCs needs a Version 2,
> which captures and preserves the Comments just as it has done for
> decades with the Requests.
>
> I guess I should write an RFC about that........
>
> /Jack
>
> On 8/7/20 2:52 PM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via Internet-history
> wrote:
> > *The RFC may be the ARPANET’s most enduring legacy*
> > EXCERPT:
> >
> > Each March, July, and November, we are reminded that the Internet is not
> > quite the mature, stable technology that it seems to be. We rely on the
> > Internet as an essential tool for our economic, social, educational, and
> > political lives. But when the Internet Engineering Task Force
> > <https://ietf.org/> meets every four months at an open conference that
> > bounces from continent to continent, more than 1,000 people from around
> the
> > world gather with change on their minds. Their vision of the global
> network
> > that all humanity shares is dynamic, evolving, and continuously
> improving.
> > Their efforts combine with the contributions of myriad others to ensure
> > that the Internet always works but is never done, never complete.
> >
> > The rapid yet orderly evolution of the Internet is all the more
> remarkable
> > considering the highly unusual way it happens: without a company, a
> > government, or a board of directors in charge. Nothing about digital
> > communications technology suggests that it should be self-organizing or,
> > for that matter, fundamentally reliable. We enjoy an Internet that is
> both
> > of those at once because multiple generations of network developers have
> > embraced a principle and a process that have been quite rare in the
> history
> > of technology. The principle is that the protocols that govern how
> > Internet-connected devices communicate should be open, expandable, and
> > robust. And the process that invents and refines those protocols demands
> > collaboration and a large degree of consensus among all who care to
> > participate.
> >
> > As someone who was part of the small team that very deliberately adopted
> a
> > collaborative, consensus-based process to develop protocols for the
> ARPANET
> > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET>—predecessor to the Internet—I
> have
> > been pleasantly surprised by how those ideas have persisted and
> succeeded,
> > even as the physical network has evolved from 50-kilobit-per-second
> > telephone lines in the mid-1960s to the fiber-optic, 5G, and satellite
> > links we enjoy today. Though our team certainly never envisioned
> > unforgeable “privacy passes
> > <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-privacy-pass/>” or unique
> identifiers
> > for Internet-connected drones
> > <https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/drip/about/>—two proposed protocols
> > discussed at the task force meeting this past March—we did circulate our
> > ideas for the ARPANET as technical memos among a far-flung group of
> > computer scientists, collecting feedback and settling on solutions in
> much
> > the same way as today, albeit at a much smaller scale.
> >
> > We called each of those early memos a “Request for Comments” or RFC.
> > Whatever networked device you use today, it almost certainly follows
> rules
> > laid down in ARPANET RFCs written decades ago, probably including
> protocols
> > for sending plain ASCII text (RFC 20
> > <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc20.html>, issued in 1969), audio or
> video
> > data streams (RFC 768 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc768.html>, 1980),
> and
> > Post Office Protocol, or POP, email (RFC 918
> > <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc918.html>, 1984).
> >
> > *Anatomy of an RFC*...
> >
> > [...]
> >
> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/cyberspace/todays-internet-still-relies-on-an-arpanetera-protocol-the-request-for-comments
> >
>
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