RFC = Request For Comments.

A series of notes about the Internet, started in 1969 (when the Internet was the ARPANET). An Internet Document can be submitted to the The Internet Engineering Task Force by anyone, but the IETF decides if the document becomes an RFC. Eventually, if it gains enough interest, it may evolve into an Internet standard. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs (e.g. perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard).

RFCs are available for anyone through anonymous FTP.

Each RFC is designated by an RFC number. Once published, an RFC never changes. Modifications to an original RFC are assigned a new RFC number

The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards.

The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO.

The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions.