RFC series

This document specifies version 3 of the RFC Editor Model. The model defines two high-level tasks related to the RFC Series. First, policy definition is the joint responsibility of the RFC Series Working Group (RSWG), which produces policy proposals, and the RFC Series Approval Board (RSAB), which approves such proposals. Second, policy implementation is primarily the responsibility of the RFC Production Center (RPC) as contractually overseen by the IETF Administration Limited Liability Company (IETF LLC). In addition, various responsibilities of the RFC Editor function are now performed alone or in combination by the RSWG, RSAB, RPC, RFC Series Consulting Editor (RSCE), and IETF LLC. Finally, this document specifies the Editorial Stream for publication of future policy definition documents produced through the processes defined herein.

Since the publication of RFC 9280, lessons have been learned about implementing this model. This document lists some of those lessons learned and updates RFC 9280 based on that experience. This document obsoletes RFC 9280.

This document updates RFCs 7841, 7991, 7992, 7993, 7994, 7995, 7996, 7997, 8729, 8730, and 9720.

This document defines policy for the inclusion of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) in the definitive versions of RFCs and relevant publication formats. It contains policy requirements from RFC 7996 but removes all requirements related to using a specific SVG profile or implementation code. It also makes the RFC Production Center (RPC) responsible for decisions about SVG tooling and implementation.

This document obsoletes RFC 7996.

In order to improve the readability of RFCs while supporting their archivability, the definitive version of the RFC Series transitioned from plain-text ASCII to XML using the RFCXML vocabulary; different publication versions are rendered from that base document. This document describes how RFCs are published.

This document obsoletes RFC 7990. This document also updates the stability policy in RFC 9280.

This document describes the individuals and organizations involved in the IETF standards process, as described in BCP 9. It includes brief descriptions of the entities involved and the role they play in the standards process.

The IETF and its structure have undergone many changes since RFC 2028 was published in 1996. This document reflects the changed organizational structure of the IETF and obsoletes RFC 2028.

In RFC 9280, responsibility for the RFC Series moved to the RFC Series Working Group and the RFC Series Approval Board. It is no longer the responsibility of the RFC Editor, and the role of the IAB in the RFC Series is altered. Accordingly, in Section 2.1 of RFC 2026, the sentence "RFC publication is the direct responsibility of the RFC Editor, under the general direction of the IAB" is deleted.

This document updates the IAB Charter (RFC 2850) to be consistent with version 3 of the RFC Editor Model (RFC 9280).

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) maintains registries to track code points used by protocols such as those defined by the IETF and documented in RFCs developed on the IETF Stream.

The Independent Submission Stream is another source of documents that can be published as RFCs. This stream is under the care of the Independent Submissions Editor (ISE).

This document complements RFC 4846 by providing a description of how the ISE currently handles documents in the Independent Submission Stream that request actions from IANA. Nothing in this document changes existing IANA registries or their allocation policies, nor does it change any previously documented processes.

This document describes the framework for an RFC Series and an RFC Editor function that incorporate the principles of organized community involvement and accountability that has become necessary as the Internet technical community has grown, thereby enabling the RFC Series to continue to fulfill its mandate. This document obsoletes RFC 4844.

This document describes the function and responsibilities of the RFC Independent Submission Editor (ISE). The Independent Submission stream is one of the stream producers that create draft RFCs, with the ISE as its stream approver. The ISE is overall responsible for activities within the Independent Submission stream, working with draft editors and reviewers, and interacts with the RFC Production Center and Publisher, and the RFC Series Editor (RSE). The ISE is appointed by the IAB, and also interacts with the IETF Administration Limited Liability Company (LLC).

This version obsoletes RFC 6548 to replace all references to the Internet Administrative Support Activity (IASA) and related structures with those defined by the IASA 2.0 structure.

This RFC marks the fiftieth anniversary for the RFC Series. It includes both retrospective material from individuals involved at key inflection points as well as a review of the current state of affairs. It concludes with thoughts on possibilities for the next fifty years for the Series. This document updates the perspectives offered in RFCs 2555 and 5540.

The RFC Editor is both the publisher and the archivist for the RFC Series. This document applies specifically to the archivist role of the RFC Editor. It provides guidance on when and how to preserve RFCs and describes the tools required to view or re-create RFCs as necessary. This document also highlights gaps in the current process and suggests compromises to balance cost with best practice.

In order to meet the evolving needs of the Internet community, the canonical format for RFCs is changing from a plain-text, ASCII-only format to an XML format that will, in turn, be rendered into several publication formats. This document defines the HTML format that will be rendered for an RFC or Internet-Draft.

The HTML format for RFCs assigns style guidance to a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) specifically defined for the RFC Series. The embedded, default CSS as included by the RFC Editor is expected to take into account accessibility needs and to be built along a responsive design model. This document describes the requirements for the default CSS used by the RFC Editor. The class names are based on the classes defined in "HTML for RFCs" (RFC 7992).

In 2013, after a great deal of community discussion, the decision was made to shift from the plain-text, ASCII-only canonical format for RFCs to XML as the canonical format with more human-readable formats rendered from that XML. The high-level requirements that informed this change were defined in RFC 6949, "RFC Series Format Requirements and Future Development". Plain text remains an important format for many in the IETF community, and it will be one of the publication formats rendered from the XML. This document outlines the rendering requirements for the plain-text RFC publication format. These requirements do not apply to plain-text RFCs published before the format transition.

This document discusses options and requirements for the PDF rendering of RFCs in the RFC Series, as outlined in RFC 6949. It also discusses the use of PDF for Internet-Drafts, and available or needed software tools for producing and working with PDF.

In order to support the internationalization of protocols and a more diverse Internet community, the RFC Series must evolve to allow for the use of non-ASCII characters in RFCs. While English remains the required language of the Series, the encoding of future RFCs will be in UTF-8, allowing for a broader range of characters than typically used in the English language. This document describes the RFC Editor requirements and gives guidance regarding the use of non-ASCII characters in RFCs.

This document updates RFC 7322. Please view this document in PDF form to see the full text.

RFC documents contain a number of fixed elements such as the title page header, standard boilerplates, and copyright/IPR statements. This document describes them and introduces some updates to reflect current usage and requirements of RFC publication. In particular, this updated structure is intended to communicate clearly the source of RFC creation and review. This document obsoletes RFC 5741, moving detailed content to an IAB web page and preparing for more flexible output formats.

This document describes the way that Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are assigned to past and future RFCs. The DOI is a widely used system that assigns unique identifiers to digital documents that can be queried and managed in a consistent fashion.

This document describes the fundamental and unique style conventions and editorial policies currently in use for the RFC Series. It captures the RFC Editor's basic requirements and offers guidance regarding the style and structure of an RFC. Additional guidance is captured on a website that reflects the experimental nature of that guidance and prepares it for future inclusion in the RFC Style Guide. This document obsoletes RFC 2223, "Instructions to RFC Authors".

This document describes the current requirements and requests for enhancements for the format of the canonical version of RFCs. Terms are defined to help clarify exactly which stages of document production are under discussion for format changes. The requirements described in this document will determine what changes will be made to RFC format. This document updates RFC 2223.

This document captures the requirements for integrating IANA and RFC Editor state information into the Datatracker to provide the community with a unified tool to track the status of their document as it progresses from Internet-Draft (I-D) version -00 to RFC. Extending the Datatracker to hold document data from I-D version -00 to RFC allows for increased automation between the Datatracker, IANA, and RFC Editor, thus reducing manual labor, processing errors, and potential delay. Therefore, this document also describes the requirements to make such automation possible. This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.

This document describes extending the IETF Datatracker to capture and display the progression of Internet-Drafts that are intended to be published as RFCs by the IAB, IRTF, or Independent Submissions Editor. The states and annotations that are to be added to the Datatracker will be applied to Internet-Drafts as soon as any of these streams identify the Internet-Draft as a potential eventual RFC, and will continue through the lifetime of the Internet-Draft. The goal of adding this information to the Datatracker is to give the whole Internet community more information about the status of these Internet-Drafts and the streams from which they originate. This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.

This document specifies the procedures by which authors of RFC IAB stream documents grant the community "incoming" rights for copying and using the text. It also specifies the "outgoing" rights the community grants to readers and users of those documents, and it requests that the IETF Trust manage the outgoing rights to effect this result. This memo provides information for the Internet community.

This document specifies the procedures by which authors of RFC Independent Submission documents grant the community "incoming" rights for copying and using the text. It also specifies the "outgoing" rights the community grants to readers and users of those documents, and it requests that the IETF Trust manage the outgoing rights to effect this result. This memo provides information for the Internet community.

From time to time, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) publishes documents as Requests for Comments (RFCs). This document defines the process by which those documents are produced, reviewed, and published in the RFC Series. This memo provides information for the Internet community.

There is a long-standing tradition in the Internet community, predating the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) by many years, of use of the RFC Series to publish materials that are not rooted in the IETF standards process and its review and approval mechanisms. These documents, known as "Independent Submissions", serve a number of important functions for the Internet community, both inside and outside of the community of active IETF participants. This document discusses the Independent Submission model and some reasons why it is important. It then describes editorial and processing norms that can be used for Independent Submissions as the community goes forward into new relationships between the IETF community and its primary technical publisher. This memo provides information for the Internet community.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Request for Comments (RFC) Editor have a long-standing rule that a document at a given maturity level cannot be published until all of the documents that it references as normative are at that maturity level or higher. This rule has sometimes resulted in very long publication delays for documents and some claims that it was a major obstruction to advancing documents in maturity level. The IETF agreed on a way to bypass this rule with RFC 3967. This document describes a simpler procedure for downward references to Standards-Track and Best Current Practice (BCP) documents, namely "note and move on". The procedure in RFC 3967 still applies for downward references to other classes of documents. In both cases, annotations should be added to such References. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.

This RFC is a slightly annotated list of the 100 RFCs from RFC 3500 through RFC 3599. This is a status report on these RFCs.

The rest of this document contains a brief recollection from the present RFC Editor Joyce K. Reynolds, followed by recollections from three pioneers: Steve Crocker who wrote RFC 1, Vint Cerf whose long-range vision continues to guide us, and Jake Feinler who played a key role in the middle years of the RFC series. This memo provides information for the Internet community.

This document is a guide for Internet standard writers. It defines those characteristics that make standards coherent, unambiguous, and easy to interpret. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.

This document discusses the relationship of the Request for Comments (RFCs) notes to Internet Standards. This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.

The STDs are a subseries of notes within the RFC series that are the Internet standards. The intent is to identify clearly for the Internet community those RFCs which document Internet standards. [STANDARDS-TRACK]

This RFC Reference Guide is intended to provide a historical account by categorizing and summarizing of the Request for Comments numbers 1 through 999 issued between the years 1969-1987. These documents have been crossed referenced to indicate which RFCs are current, obsolete, or revised.

This RFC is a reference guide for the Internet community which provides a bibliographic summary of the Request for Comments numbers 1 through 999 issued between the years 1969-1987.

This RFC is a slightly annotated list of the 100 RFCs from RFC 700 through RFC 799. This is a status report on these RFCs.