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Happy 35th birthday, RFC 1!

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-thats-an-anniversary dept.

An anonymous reader writes "On April 7th, 1969, the first ever RFC was published, describing the networking technology behind the then-nascent ARPAnet. In the intervening 35 years, networking technology has come a long way, but it brings perspective to the modern Internet to reflect on how it all began."

3 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Wow, creation story of the internet by ResQuad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reading that RFC is like reading the creation story of the internet, you can see where some of the things they come up with wayyyyy back then, have moved now. Normally I am not much for reading RFC's, but thats really intresting, if for nothing else to see how far we have gone in just 35 years.

    --
    snowulf.com
  2. Re:Strange by re-Verse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Redundant - parents post isn't redundant. I'd score it at least a +4 (a mix of funny and insightful). I mean, it makes total sense. You'd expect the first RFC to quite clearly lay out a concept of how an RFC will work.

    I'm probably burning karma with this post but i think its completely unfair that that post got knocked down.

  3. Now that's a small network by iamnotaclown · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the RFC:
    The header is 16 bits and contains the following information:

    Destination 5 bits
    Link 8 bits
    Trace 1 bit
    Spare 2 bits

    The destination is the numerical code for the HOST to which the message should be sent.
    5 bits for destination means a maximum of 32 hosts. And I bet they thought that was overkill at the time. :-)