RFCs

RFCs (Requests For Comments) are the documents that define how the Internet works.

Since 1969 the IETF and its forerunners have used them to publish protocols, conventions, and ideas, one numbered memo at a time.

Most RFCs are dry technical specifications. But a small subset of those are something entirely different: they describe the Internet's culture - how to behave on it, how it governs and remembers itself, and the jokes it tells about itself.

This site

This site will list a couple of those cultural RFCs, converting original plain text into HTML + some additions. That said, while RFCs are authoritative historical documents - this site is merely a fan site. The text will be as true to original, but some things will be different. Every RFC page links back to the authoritative text at the RFC Editor.

• Most of this information is decades old. Some of it might be irrelevant nowadays.
• Some links are dead. Some - will be replaced for active ones.
• Some things will have additional links, just for fun.

At its core it will be the FYI subseries on etiquette, history, and security written for people, plus a a few documents on how the IETF works and the long-running April Fools' tradition.

Random links

• Internet Top Ten Lists (https://www.savetz.com/topten/), an unpublished book of Internet history, statistics, trivia, and culture, circa 1994
• A first access internet tutorial (/docs/firstaccess.pdf). "Results show that a 59 percent improvement occurred in student ability as a result of using the tutorial"