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rfc:rfc1796

Network Working Group C. Huitema Request for Comments: 1796 INRIA Category: Informational J. Postel

                                                                   ISI
                                                            S. Crocker
                                                             CyberCash
                                                            April 1995
                     Not All RFCs are Standards

Status of this Memo

 This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This memo
 does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of
 this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

 This document discusses the relationship of the Request for Comments
 (RFCs) notes to Internet Standards.

Not All RFCs Are Standards

 The "Request for Comments" (RFC) document series is the official
 publication channel for Internet standards documents and other
 publications of the IESG, IAB, and Internet community.  From time to
 time, and about every six months in the last few years, someone
 questions the rationality of publishing both Internet standards and
 informational documents as RFCs.  The argument is generally that this
 introduces some confusion between "real standards" and "mere
 publications".
 It is a regrettably well spread misconception that publication as an
 RFC provides some level of recognition.  It does not, or at least not
 any more than the publication in a regular journal.  In fact, each
 RFC has a status, relative to its relation with the Internet
 standardization process: Informational, Experimental, or Standards
 Track (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard, Internet Standard), or
 Historic.  This status is reproduced on the first page of the RFC
 itself, and is also documented in the periodic "Internet Official
 Protocols Standards" RFC (STD 1).  But this status is sometimes
 omitted from quotes and references, which may feed the confusion.
 There are two important sources of information on the status of the
 Internet standards:  they are summarized periodically in an RFC
 entitled "Internet Official Protocol Standards" and they are
 documented in the "STD" subseries.  When a specification has been

Huitema, Postel & Crocker [Page 1] RFC 1796 Not All RFCs are Standards April 1995

 adopted as an Internet Standard, it is given the additional label
 "STD xxxx", but it keeps its RFC number and its place in the RFC
 series.
 It is important to note that the relationship of STD numbers to RFC
 numbers is not one to one.  STD numbers identify protocols, RFC
 numbers identify documents.  Sometimes more than one document is used
 to specify a Standard protocol.
 In order to further increase the publicity of the standardization
 status, the IAB proposes the following actions:
    Use the STD number, rather than just the RFC numbers, in the cross
    references between standard tracks documents,
    Utilize the "web" hypertext technology to publicize the state of
    the standardization process.
 More precisely, we propose to add to the current RFC repository an
 "html" version of the "STD-1" document, i.e., the list of Internet
 standards.  We are considering the extension of this document to also
 describes actions in progress, i.e., standards track work at the
 "proposed" or "draft" stage.

A Single Archive

 The IAB believes that the community benefitted significantly from
 having a single archival document series.  Documents are easy to find
 and to retrieve, and file servers are easy to organize.  This has
 been very important over the long term.  Experience of the past shows
 that subseries, or series of limited scope, tend to vanish from the
 network.  And, there is no evidence that alternate document schemes
 would result in less confusion.
 Moreover, we believe that the presence of additional documents does
 not actually hurt the standardization process.  The solution which we
 propose is to better publicize the "standard" status of certain
 documents, which is made relatively easy by the advent of networked
 hypertext technologies.

Rather Document Than Ignore

 The RFC series includes some documents which are informational by
 nature and other documents which describe experiences.  A problem of
 perception occurs when such a document "looks like" an official
 protocol specification.  Misguided vendors may claim conformance to
 it, and misguided clients may actually believe that they are buying
 an Internet standard.

Huitema, Postel & Crocker [Page 2] RFC 1796 Not All RFCs are Standards April 1995

 The IAB believes that the proper help to misguided vendors and
 clients is to provide them guidance.  There is actually very little
 evidence of vendors purposely attempting to present informational or
 experimental RFCs as "Internet standards".  If such attempts
 occurred, proper response would indeed be required.
 The IAB believes that the community is best served by openly
 developed specifications.  The Internet standardization process
 provides guarantees of openness and thorough review, and the normal
 way to develop the specification of an Internet protocol is indeed
 through the IETF.
 The community is also well served by having access to specifications
 of which have been developed outside the IETF standards process,
 either because the protocols are experimental in nature, were
 developed privately, or failed to achieve the acquire the degree of
 consensus required for elevation to the standards track.
 The IAB believes that publication is better than ignorance.  If a
 particular specification ends up being used in products that are
 deployed over the Internet, we are better off if the specification is
 easy to retrieve as an RFC than if it is hidden in some private
 repository.

Huitema, Postel & Crocker [Page 3] RFC 1796 Not All RFCs are Standards April 1995

Security Considerations

 Security issues are not discussed in this memo.

Authors' Addresses

 Christian Huitema
 INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis
 2004 Route des Lucioles
 BP 109
 F-06561 Valbonne Cedex
 France
 Phone: +33 93 65 77 15
 EMail: Christian.Huitema@MIRSA.INRIA.FR
 Jon Postel
 USC/Information Sciences Institute
 4676 Admiralty Way
 Marina del Rey, CA 90292
 Phone: 1-310-822-1511
 EMail: Postel@ISI.EDU
 Steve Crocker
 CyberCash, Inc.
 2086 Hunters Crest Way
 Vienna, VA 22181
 Phone: 1- 703-620-1222
 EMail: crocker@cybercash.com

Huitema, Postel & Crocker [Page 4]

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