Slashdot Mirror
Happy 35th birthday, RFC 1!
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."
Ok, I surely failed but it's funny :)
I'd have thought the first RFC would have been defining the structure of RFC's. :)
Is it too late to raise comments now?
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
When its hot outside, and your hemmoroids are even
hotter, just look to the cool relief of Preparation-H
to get you on your way.
MS' article of incorporation?
Do we get cake?
It was 19 when I finally got a dialup connection to a server with a shell account. I know my life could have been spent more wisely...had I only been connected sooner.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hey HOMOSEXUALS all over the world! Join the aPPLE computer club now !!
Club theme song is YMCA by the VILLAGE PEOPLE! Young man, join now!
If you're talking about the hardware, then the first networks were the telegraph networks followed by the telephone networks. The thing is, the telephone networks that still carry the majority of Internet traffic haven't changed since Alexander Graham Bell. In fact, if he were reanimated and shown a wall jack he'd recognize it and the telephone connected to it. Neither have changed much since he invented them. If you're talking about protocols and computer networking then I guess we've come along way since 1969. I suppose.
Somehow, I get the feeling Al Gore will not be invited to its birthday party.
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
This was posted 5 years ago. It has a birthday every year, folks :)
RP
I see no reason to upgrade to RFC 2, just useless bloat I say. RFC1's worked great for 35 years, and it'll work great for another 35.
Happy 35th birthday, RFC 1!!!!!
should I also post my birthday on slashdot ?
thats going to be fun if everybody posted birthday...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
A simple RFC fights in Vietnam, lives through the turbulent sixties, experiences the wide lapels and platforms of the drugged out seventies, and ends up a washed up April fool's pigeon joke.
The standards for annoying popups and secret dialers that connect you to 1-900 numbers?
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
It's in the book. You could look it up (or google).
This one is my favourite:
RFC 1149: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
The RFC includes an itneresting statment about 'user input from keyboard, Lincoln Wand, etc.'. It appears that a Lincoln Wand is what we now call a stylus...
http://www.packet.cc/files/lincoln-wand.html
Your monitor is staring at you.
> Which technology do you mean exactly?
RTFA (or RTFM). It's an RFC for the IMP networking protocol. It looks like layers 2-4 all in one!
If you don't know what an RFC is, then here is what you need to know.
Um I figured out RFC stands for Request For Comments. But what actually is it in the short version. I Never ran across this term before. But I would like to be enlighten.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Will Mel Gibson be making a movie based on RFC 1?
"SRI is currently modifying their on-line retrieval system which will be the major software component on the Network Documentation Center so that it can be operated with model 35 teletypes. The control of the teletypes will be written in DEL. All sites will write DEL compilers and use NLS through the DEL program."
It may be hard to imagine, but back then CRT terminals were a rare beast. Most machine interaction was done via Teletype, punch cards, and line printers.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
But 0! (zero factorial) is equal to 1, so what's your problem?
If you meant RFC0, I'm working on that right now, and it will be published in 1967 as soon as I can get this flux capacitor to work...
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
...but unlike you, I know my life could have been spent more wisely, had I only connected later. All those late nights (couldn't occupy the line on daytime) downloading which I could have done in a tiny fraction of the time now.
.txt files) was sloooow. Ah well, I'm sure those that grow up today will one day envy the young ones growing up with 100Mbit+ Internet connections, lol.
Sigh I remember then how downloading images (hell, even
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Being that I was born on this day in '68.
:D
I guess that explains why I like to be online all the time ^ ^
A bit off-topic, I know, but it's nice to know I'm close to the birth of something nifty
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Now let us imagine if there was a small change in history, resulting in large changes, that resulted in even larger changes, to the internet! Now imagine if there was no feminist movement of any kind in the 1900s, and that 50% of the American adult population today was housewives that use the internet all day long. OMFGLOLROTFLMFAO!!!!!
RFC 4 has a date of 24 March 1969. Granted, it probably wasn't considered an RFC until a couple of weeks later, but...
is it that we are obsessed with preserving the lives of the most brutal criminals, and equally obsessed with destroying the unborn who have committed no wrong save appearing at an inopportune time in their parents' lives? What kind of preverse world have we created for ourselves?
but he still lives in his parents basement.
Don't forget to write RFC -1, while you're back there : "A algorthim for achieving the elusive first post using a time-travelling Delorean"!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Who submitted the RFC ? What has he become ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
That RFC is available in PDF format. I didn't know PDF was available back then.
I noticed that 5 bits are reserved for the destination.
Does that mean they were limited to the astronomical number of 32 hosts on the ARPANet?
-Mark
hey, now if all 'linked from front page of slashdot' posts were like this, no one would care if they got slashdotted.
.. or even netbeui
3 or os images and 5K of text, hell, even my little p200 'what the hell, it can run linux' can handle that.
This isn't really related to the post, but I find it very interesting the fact that in almost all things, the simplest answers are usually correct.
1. Built HTML that is simple enough to be read by lynx and you'll have a very readable, universally accessable, highly portable and translatable site.
2. Built a simple system of relaying packets with some transport validation mechanism (TCP) and it will take over the world.
of course could you imagine if we had to deal with bridged IPX or LAT based networks
zippi deep bap dwoop
zippppppi deep dap dwoop dwap dwap
zeeeeeeeep dwap dwawp,
pwap wpa wap,
zappadoo zippippoooooo zow
zow
zow
zow zow zow
ski dooba dooba dooba ba da mooda mooda za baahh, za ma zow zow bah zip blaough zip pow
It is found in declassified documents that Nixon was spying on it and Hoover considered putting a hit on it. That was the long silent gap in the tapes. The answer is finally known.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We all have to be happy that the wonderful world of RFCs have kept ASCII artists employed for 35 years and from the looks of it will for generations to come. Congratulation!
;-)]
[Why use vector line art when ASCII art can look so good?
today's my birthday! Happy birthday to me!
It's rather depressing to see Slashdot care so much about the 35th anniversary of an obscure technical document, and apparently not at all about the 10-year anniversary of the beginning of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
/. too much, because I didn't submit an article. But I can feel depressed now by the utter lack of mention of it.
This may not be news for nerds, but it is stuff that matters.
I can't blame
But no matter. Let's forget those dark troubling thoughts, and celebrate the 40th birthday of the IBM/360!
I've just patented the RFC process. You owe me a dollar.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
The Colonel would be so proud.
If I have a protocol I want documented, how do I find a document author who can create an RFC?
--
make install -not war
No, RFC 0 is the meta RFC. Unfortunately, documentation of the 0-based numbering scheme ("see RFC 0"), that has become so popular with computers and their geeks since the 1960s, wasn't submitted to the RFC-editor for years, well after RFC 10. By then, the RFC-editor was forced to reject it, as RFCs document actual implementations, and are merely Requests For Comments from other users of the system, not design documents. The vast preponderance of RFCs had been written (so it seemed - they'd almost completely debugged ARPANet) by RFC 10's era, so it would have been a cruel irony to finish the series merely revising the counting base to recognize the "zeroth" RFC, which indicates that RFCs start at "0".
--
make install -not war
Does that mean that RFC0 + RFC0 = RFC2? If so what does RFC1 + RFC1 = ???
Mod +5 Drunk
Then the text would read:
First RFC!!!!
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Telemarketers were around in '69. Because if they were, they might have thought that the internet, or whatever they called it (I didn't RTF RFC) wouldn't become a haven for such evil things such as spam, and worms.
It just saddens me to see that they could be carefree back then, not worrying about anything... and us having to pay the fucking piper. *sigh*
What's the smallest rfc number that's still considered "important".
Read RFC1543
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Structure definition = lawyers = hassle.
Fortunately there was none in the beginning.
The Model 33 and Model 35 were upper case only; the lower case Model 37 came later.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
... in response that RFC.
Lemme get my super-omniscient-archive up and running... oh yes, here it is. Comment #1, in reply to RFC1. Dated 11 seconds after RFC1 was issued:
"It'll never work."
Oddly, Comment #2, which was received within seconds of comment #1, was a cryptic
"Woot! First Comment!"
And th rest, as they say, is history.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Ah, the days of our trusty Decwriters - you could pound on those keyboards all day, almost a perfect desk-sized position for pitched-forward sleeping (power off please) and they weighed enough to prop up behind a door if being chased by pirates...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
This may be odd, but a quick jaunt through the archive shows that RFC4 seems to predate it by a few days: it was born on March 24th vs. RFC1's April 7th...
-Jack Ash
First RFC! W00t!
There's a short story of the RFC origin in RFC 1000 by Steve Crocker, the guy who wrote the first RFC and one of the first researchers working on the ARPANET.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1000.html
Adriana
Does it say Al Gore created the internet? =)
I've discovered a remarkable proof, but this margin is too small to contain it...
Bah, that guy *completely* forgot the Gamma function.
it's my birthday too!
Emory: Uh..we're still..beta testing that.
Oglethorpe: What you're testing is me and my patience!
I consciously mimic the style of RFCs (plain text, 72-char/line limit, with 3-character margin except for section heads), but skipped the page formatting, and came up with a variant numbering system. When a BP is updated, it gets a decimal change. BP-100.0 was actually replaced with BP-100.1 last month because it became clear that some more things needed to be defined in the meta-document.
"RFC 3 - Documentation convention" quote:
"The content of a NWG note may be any thought, suggestion, etc. related to
the HOST software or other aspect of the network. Notes are encouraged to
be timely rather than polished. Philosophical positions without examples
or other specifics, specific suggestions or implementation techniques
without introductory or background explication, and explicit questions
without any attempted answers are all acceptable. The minimum length for
a NWG note is one sentence.
These standards (or lack of them) are stated explicitly for two reasons.
First, there is a tendency to view a written statement as ipso facto
authoritative, and we hope to promote the exchange and discussion of
considerably less than authoritative ideas. Second, there is a natural
hesitancy to publish something unpolished, and we hope to ease this
inhibition."
Unfortunatelly, I fall into this category, by not having a name to use as a stool, and a discourse to use as a loudspeak.
The Request For Comments seems to have been out for quite awhile. Is anything ever going to be concluded?
Okay, who's got more than 32 hosts (or virtual hosts with different IP numbers) that are within five feet of their current location?
... 16-bit minicomputers with 4K of RAM cost about $50,000, and a 3 BR/2 BA house cost $20,000. 110 baud Teletype ASR-33 was the workhorse terminal.
I've got five in my cheapo home office. Whoops, six, counting the DSL modem!
Also, check out the 500 millisecond ping time that they expect.
For those of you who don't remember 1969
"Can I keep a piece? Because last time I was told that..."
- Milton
Read RFC 2555. It gives an interesting view of inside of the RFC world. It's written by some of the key people that invented and have made RFC's what they are today.
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
no, RFC0 + RFC0 = RFC0, but RFC0! + RFC0! = RFC2 (= RFC2!)
Why is anything anything?
It began like the entire US high tech industry. Funded with tax payers money, developed by the military, eventually privatized once commercially viable.
Will This help you Google? RFC 3098
Which is about
How to Advertise Responsibly Using E-Mail and Newsgroups
or - how NOT to MAKE ENEMIES FAST!
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3098.txt
Senthil
to draw pictures. I've even made simple schematics with text characters. -/\/\/- is a resistor.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
Al Gore decided not to have his name on this...?
RFC, Celebrating 35 years of confusing Internet Developers for various unknown protocols! Now, still in unformatted text! I hate when other people tell me to read the RFCs.. I'm too lazy to read 50 pages of words that dont include one line of code to possibly help :P
The content of a NWG note may be any thought, suggestion, etc. related to the HOST software or other aspect of the network. Notes are encouraged to be timely rather than polished. Philosophical positions without examples or other specifics, specific suggestions or implementation techniques without introductory or background explication, and explicit questions without any attempted answers are all acceptable. The minimum length for a NWG note is one sentence.
These standards (or lack of them) are stated explicitly for two reasons. First, there is a tendency to view a written statement as ipso facto authoritative, and we hope to promote the exchange and discussion of considerably less than authoritative ideas. Second, there is a natural hesitancy to publish something unpolished, and we hope to ease this inhibition.
I completely forgot that RFC1 came out of UCLA!
Real timing considering that Engineering One was knocked down just a few weeks ago..
Obviously these machines were exported in bulk to Nigeria - I can see the million chimps bashing away attempting to write prose - with a couple of shifty looking guys on the side scamming cash for more banannas
32 hosts ought to be enough for anybody!
13 years later, i was born!
I write code.
Oh, wait. No I don't.
carry on.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
RFC 25, 1969/10/30 says: ("links" are in essence TCP ports/connections)
How things have changed...Plus the origins of another big security problem: active mode FTP.
Hey guys. Do you know anything about April 1 RFC for this year?
-- When did Ignorance Become a Point of View?