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."

First RFC !

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I surely failed but it's funny :)

Re:First RFC !

[lcsjk]

We were using RFC's long before that. But then Request-For-Change was how all this internet stuff got started anyway!

Re:First RFC !

[j-pimp]

But then Request-For-Change was how all this internet stuff got started anyway! Auctually its request for comments!!!

Re:First RFC !

[lcsjk]

Auctually, you are right. I was making a joke. RFC was and is the common term used throughout industry for change requests (along with ECN and ECR) long before the internet got started. RFC is for those outside the engineering dept.-generally.

Re:What If?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Well, at least trolls would be send to bed by their mothers when they do their thing.
Just imagine what a "First Post" thread would look:

- Fris Psot! (by Johny the Troll)
- Johny, I told you a million time not to annoy the nice people on Slashdot. Now go do you're homework!. (by Johny's Mother)
- oh mom, I'll do it after dinner.
- Now listen here young man, you'll do as you're told or do I have to send your father an e-mail?

Re:What If?

[TheCrazyFinn]

However, the Suffrage movement predates Prohibition, and the two were intrinsically tied (Most of the movers and shakers in the Prohibition Movement got their start as suffragettes)

Strange

[ThatTallGuy]

I'd have thought the first RFC would have been defining the structure of RFC's. :)

Re:Strange

[re-Verse]

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.

Re:Strange

[Frymaster]

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

i think you're confusing the subject of this story with the lesser-known RFK.

request for karma

Re:Strange

[GrouchoMarx]

i think you're confusing the subject of this story with the lesser-known RFK.

Now what does the late President's late brother have to do with anything? He didn't invent the Internet, did he?

(Robert F. Kennedy, for those who don't know their American history...)

Re:Strange

[ezzzD55J]

Using itself? how could it ever be written then? The structure of RFC's has to be defined out-of-band, if you ask me.

Re:Strange

[cethiesus]

RFC2223 - Instructions to RFC Authors [ietf.org]

RFC 0825 - Request for comments on Requests For Comments [slashdot.org]

prefirst

[Doc Ruby]

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".

Re:Strange

[lfourrier]

no, it was nb 3, 2 days later

0003 Documentation conventions. S.D. Crocker. Apr-09-1969. (Format:
TXT=2323 bytes) (Obsoleted by RFC0010) (Status: UNKNOWN)

Re:starting with the definition.

[God! Awful 2]

My manager asked me to work on some 'Best Practices' documents to define the consensus of the Right Way To Do Things. [...] I consciously mimic the style of RFCs (plain text, 72-char/line limit, with 3-character margin except for section heads)

So you don't use zero-based numbering because "most people can't handle it" and yet for the layout, you choose RFC-style 72-char/line plain text?!? Will most of your target audiences be reading these documents on a text-mode dumb terminal?

You must think you're real

Too late

[jolyonr]

Is it too late to raise comments now?

Re:Too late

[ackthpt]

Is it too late to raise comments now?

It's never too late, but your comments may not draw much serious attention.

I'm curious which model of Teletype they were using, back in 1969. My father still has a few Model 14 and I first used 33's on a visit to a corporate sponsor of my Explorer Post. I always did like the font from the Model 43, I used to run off most of my library copies of code on them for the easy to read font.

Ah the smell of printer ribbon ink in the spring...

teletype models

[John_Sauter]

We used Model 33's and Model 35's. These used 7-bit ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) rather than the 5-bit Baudot used by the Model 28. The low cost of the Model 33 made ASCII the standard character set for non-IBM computers of the time, and hence for the Internet.

The Model 33 and Model 35 were upper case only; the lower case Model 37 came later.
John Sauter ([e-mail])

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I have a very important question.

[daeley]

Nina: "Now DrEldarion, don't be greedy, let's pass it along and make sure everyone gets a piece."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I have a very important question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that what RFC means - Request for Cake? MMM RFC.

Oh oh...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

"The ration of people-to-cake is off!"

Re:I have a very important question.

[rbolkey]

"Sorry, we're all out of cake."

How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[ackthpt]

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.

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[AyeRoxor!]

I was 17 in 1995 when I got my first dialup shell. It was also my first introduction to unix, FTP, chmod, and hosting a website. I had been on BBS's since I was 14, which was in 1992. I had first used a modem when I was about 10. My parents got me my first computer, an IBM PCjr, when I was 8.

Goodbye, time. It flees.

More like 14-15 here...

[Kjella]

...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.

Sigh I remember then how downloading images (hell, even .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.

Kjella

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[silas_moeckel]

Internet was at age 10 (dialup to a local Uni) but there wasent much there (1985) the BBS's were where it was at for that time along with things like FidoNet.

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[jav1231]

I'm with ya. RFC 1 was about 18 or so in 1987. Around that time I logged onto my first BBS. It was a couple of years later before the such BBS's started using FidoNet extensively. I remember thinking "Cool! I can send an email to the west coast and have a reply by morning!" Now users complain when they're not there immediately!
User: "Yeah, I was on the phone with my vendor and sent them a critical document. I stayed on the phone and they didn't receive it. We waited several minutes and nothing! Is the In

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[SoTuA]

I was sixteen, I was two years from graduating high school and my brother let me use his University account. I logged in with our 386 laptop with the internal 2600 baud modem, and used it to ftp to some university or the other to harvest album lyrics and guitar tabs (the old olga archive, methinks)

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[stephenisu]

2400 baud you mean? 9600? :)

ah, the good ol' days...

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[SoTuA]

2400... seems like I got it mixed up with the atari 2600 :D

This crop of young 'uns that don't remember the text-only internet!

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[stephenisu]

Gotcha, my first was a 9600 fax 2400 data modem. God it pissed me off. It was almost as fast to fax me a BBS page as it was to have me log in and watch the ASCII art download one line at a time.

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[Alioth]

I was 18. Actually, I was already running a FidoNet BBS by then.

I also rooted the Unix box at work (an IBM 6150 RT running AIX 3.something) due to a really trivial root password (it wasn't a computer job, but in the idle moments, I started learning Unix on that machine. Mainly by trying to see what each command did. Whilst logged in as root! It was great fun when I discovered 'wall'. Good job I didn't experimentally try rm -rf * :-) Things got much safer when I discovered the 'man' command)

Ah, the days be

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I guess I was 14 or 15 when I got my first modem. A shiny 2400bps modem I got cheaply. With it I could try out those mysterieus BBS's.

I believe it was when I got 16 that Compuserve started with mailing those CD's with a free day of internet access. I got a few (dozen) of those and so managed to get several weeks of free internet access @ 14k400bps.
Later I got a free month of internet access through Planet internet and after that month I got my first real account @ 56Kbps.
And about 2 years ago I switched

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[SCHecklerX]

Hrm..I guess I'd date that to when I discovered usenet in 1992 (on PSUVM). Before that the only online that I knew was BBS's. TCP/IP? On my Modem? NEAT! (back when I did my first SLIP line on OS/2 back into PSU...I guess that was around 1993/1994)

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[Punk Walrus]

I was 21, at the Bessel machine at the University of Maryland, when I got my shell account. It was a Sun System V, I think, and I had a version of csh. My job was to check for core dumps, and do network testing for the admin. Real basic stuff. I browsed ftp and gopherspace with ARCHIE and VERONICA. Anyone remember WAIS? Panda?

Before that, BBSs. Mostly WWIV, Nightline, and a few other types of software. I helped set up a Fidonet once, which had a crossover into the 'Net, and another time, was a tec

Re:How old was it when YOU first got on the net?

[dbIII]

I 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.

Age 23 - Usenet - alt.rec.brewing? - beer brewing recipies, then a dial up account and an msdos gopher client two years later when the access prices came down.

April 7th, 1969

[pen]

April 7th, 1969... Isn't that before the beginning of time()?

Re:April 7th, 1969

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems odd to me that Un*x time starts 1/1/70, but the opperating system was in development before that date. Which raises the question, what did they use for a base before 1970?

Re:April 7th, 1969

[grub]

what did they use for a base before 1970?

A black and white camera looking at a sundial in the Berkeley campus.

Re:April 7th, 1969

[SCHecklerX]

Heh..this type of thing is actually pretty true. I remember when we first got cable tv (little redneck town at the top of a mountain). The 'information channel' (you know, the one that now uses windoze, likely used amiga in the past to show communitity bulletins and weather and such) was a camera inside of a cylinder. Within the cylinder, they had mounted a thermometer, barometer, and community notices in large type on paper. The camera would slowly revolve to show everything. Didn't really seem weird

Re:April 7th, 1969

[belloc]

Which raises the question, what did they use for a base before 1970?

Well, back then, all their base weren't belong to...^H^H^H^H

Well, there were no bases to belong to...us...back^H^H^H^H

In the '60s, all their bases were belong to them...^H^H^H^H

Oh, forget it. I'll never be 'Slashdot funny'.

Belloc

Re:April 7th, 1969

[nutznboltz]

Read The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System [bell-labs.com] by Dennis M. Ritchie. Not that the answer is there but it's a good read.

An answer to your question can be found in the TUHS archive [tuhs.org]. Once inside an archive mirror look for the Readme in the directory PDP-11/Distributions/research/1972_stuff for this quote

In the early version of UNIX, timestamps were in 1/60th second units. A 32-bit counter using these units overflows in 2.5 years, so the epoch had to be changed periodically, and I believe 1970, 1971, 19

Re:April 7th, 1969

[neodymium]

isn't that why some older OS treat time() as signed int ?

Re:April 7th, 1969

[mustangsal66]

Hmm...

RFC 1 - 8 months BE (Before Epoch)

Interesting

Which technology do you mean exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

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 si

RTF[AM]

[Plutor]

> 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!

Re:Which technology do you mean exactly?

[tverbeek]

I thought that phones were not modular (able to be plugged in and out) until recently. I read that the phones were hard wired until the last 30 years or so. True/Not True?

I'm no expert on this, but I believe the modern RJ11 wall jack came into widespread use in the U.S. in the 1960's or 70's. (I remember seeing them for the first time as a kid.) Before that the standard removable connector was a largish plug with four round prongs in a trapezoidal arrangement (so it could only go on one way). In Bell's

Hrmmm...

[SeaDour]

Somehow, I get the feeling Al Gore will not be invited to its birthday party.

Re:Hrmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

That that post were funny it would be Score:5,Funny

Wow, creation story of the internet

[ResQuad]

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.

Re:Wow, creation story of the internet

[Jugalator]

Indeed :-)

How about this one:
RFC 799 - Internet name domains [faqs.org] (September 1981)

"In the long run, it will not be practicable for every internet
host to include all internet hosts in its name-address tables."

:-)

Re:Wow, creation story of the internet

[4of12]

An important one.

IMHO, probably one of the most important and most well-known is RFC 822 [faqs.org].

Even though HTTP is used even more than SMTP these days it wasn't always so. I kept hearing no end of RFC 822, the Dcc field, etc. in the old days.

From a history of the Internet perspective I have to wonder when it was that port 80 traffic overtook port 25.

Interesting tidbits

[achurch]

RFC 25, 1969/10/30 says: ("links" are in essence TCP ports/connections)

NO HIGH LINK NUMBERS

Because it may be desirable to reserve one or more link numbers for instrumentation purposes, and because 256 link numbers are many more than are needed, we suggest that no link number over 63 be used. At UCLA, we will implement our tables to take advantage of this limitation. We also note that 32 may be even more realistic, but 64 is certainly sufficient.

How things have changed...

Yet Another Dup... Come on, Slashdot

[ReadParse]

This was posted 5 years ago [slashdot.org]. It has a birthday every year, folks :)

RP

And I'm still using it

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

If Steve Crocker had been a *real* programmer...

[kclittle]

... he'd have called it RFC 0! :-)

Re:If Steve Crocker had been a *real* programmer..

[jpetts]

... he'd have called it RFC 0!

But 0! (zero factorial) is equal to 1 [mathforum.org], 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...

Re:If Steve Crocker had been a *real* programmer..

[DR SoB]

Does that mean that RFC0 + RFC0 = RFC2? If so what does RFC1 + RFC1 = ???

I see a movie in this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

...and IBM/360 is 40 today

[Jayfar]

It's in the book. You could look it up (or google).

And some great RFCs followed...

[piquadratCH]

This one [ietf.org] is my favourite:

RFC 1149: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers

'Lincoln Wand' = stylus?

[wodelltech]

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

Re:'Lincoln Wand' = stylus?

[freshmkr]

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.

I had never heard of it before either, but if you read more carefully [packet.cc], it appears that the Lincoln Wand is more like a 3D mouse. It's basically an ultrasonic microphone that picks up signals from four ultrasound transmitters--the delay caused by the speed of sound is used to determine the wand's location in space. A quote:

An ultrasonic position-sensin

Re:'Lincoln Wand' = stylus?

[este]

An ultrasonic position-sensing device has been designed which will allow a computer to determine periodically the x, y, and z coordinates of the tip of a pensized wand.

Am I the only one who misread this as being a penis-sized wand? Now -that- would make for an interesting input device.....though probably most effective for navigating through pr0n.

More on RFCs

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't know what an RFC is, then here is what you need to know [wikipedia.org].

Question from the ignorant.

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Question from the ignorant.

[swschrad]

The Connected Internet was operated by committee of the users. engineering details were worked out through the mechanism of issuance of RFCs (request for comment) and comments thereto for the filer and /or committee. the IETF (internet engineering task force) was the body that governed the RFC process, and it just sorta grew out of some chats by the detail wizards working on the Arpanet at the time.

what we have now is not necessarily The Connected Internet as it was known and loved in the 80s and early 90s. but it should remain as such, controlled by the users, not a bunch of pinheaded goddamned government know-nothings pushing alternate agendas.

Re:Question from the ignorant.

[globalar]

You can tell that open collaboration and communication are at the heart of the Internet, going back to its design. Look at the titling of core documents - "Request for Comment." Even on /., the nature of an article is requesting for comments and further analysis. Because of this legacy, where humans once networked computers, computers network humans.

This process stands today because it works - not perfectly, but we all benefit from the paradigm. It is our responsibility as members (and some of us profe

RFC 1

[phunster]

Will Mel Gibson be making a movie based on RFC 1?

Interesting note at the end

[stox]

"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.

Re:Interesting note at the end

[ross.w]

I remember in the Fortran course thatn was part of my Engineering degree we had teletypes. I used to log in to the VDU to write my assignment, then log out and go to the teletype to print it out because it was easier than figuring out how to use the printer.

I was forced to learn when they junked the teletypes.

Suddenly I dont feel so "old"

[KarmaOverDogma]

Being that I was born on this day in '68.

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 :D
.

A couple weeks late?

[soh10r]

RFC 4 [faqs.org] has a date of 24 March 1969. Granted, it probably wasn't considered an RFC until a couple of weeks later, but...

Sure RFC 1's 35...

[Intocabile]

but he still lives in his parents basement.

amazing linked to article

[satsuke]

hey, now if all 'linked from front page of slashdot' posts were like this, no one would care if they got slashdotted.

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 .. or even netbeui

Keeping ASCII artist employeed since 1969...

[shawnce]

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? ;-)]

Now that's a small network

[iamnotaclown]

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. :-)

Re:Now that's a small network

[B.D.Mills]

Yes that's true - only the person speaking forgot to specify the base for that number.

Don't Read It!

[nightsweat]

I've just patented the RFC process. You owe me a dollar.

Re:Don't Read It!

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I just patented the dollar. So you own me half of your money. And tomorrow, you'll own me half your money again.
But don't worry, you'll never be out of money. You'll just get infinitly close to broke.

Re:Don't Read It!

[nightsweat]

Curses, foiled again. Wanna race?

RFC authors?

[Doc Ruby]

If I have a protocol I want documented, how do I find a document author who can create an RFC?

RFC1543

[RAMMS+EIN]

Read RFC1543 [faqs.org]

Re:RFC1543

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks. I'm looking for a way to find *authors*, not just instructions to them. When I find them, the first question I'll ask them is "What is RFC 1543?" They actually need know nothing else, but of course tech experience will differentiate those who do have that necessary writing skill.

Well, they left out the first COMMENT submitted...

[SmurfButcher Bob]

... 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.

We didn't have no fancy CRTs - and we LIKED it!

[jpellino]

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...

Oldest RFC

[JackAsh]

This may be odd, but a quick jaunt through the archive shows that RFC4 [faqs.org] seems to predate it by a few days: it was born on March 24th vs. RFC1's April 7th...

-Jack Ash

Summary of RFC1...

[Mignon]

For those too lazy to check it out themselves, I've provided the following summary of RFC1, translated to modern, Slashdot-ese:

First RFC! W00t!

RFC 2555 - 30 years of RFC's

[FePe]

Read RFC 2555 [rfc-editor.org]. 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.

RFC 4 is older

[stesch]

0004 Network timetable. E.B. Shapiro. Mar-24-1969.
(Format: TXT=5933 bytes) (Status: UNKNOWN)

now i know i'm really a nerd...

[hatrisc]

13 years later, i was born!

What a different world it was

[nutznboltz]

A console driver that requires the client to trust the host enough to compile and run source code it sends.

Plus the origins of another big security problem: active mode FTP.

To initiate this class of link, user level programs at both ends of an established TTY-like link must request the establishment of a file-like connection parallel to the TTY-like link.

Re:Happy bday!

[ash*embers]

Wasn't even a fetus by then. Just a mere RFC between my 'rents.

Re:Happy bday!

[Anonymous Coward]

Request for Contraception?

Re:Happy bday!

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Yes, but you should know that the rule on posting birthdays on /. is that you have to buy every one of us a (few) beer(s), and in exchange we will sing "happy birthday to you".

Re:32 Hosts??

[Lennie]

No this was before the ARPANet. Had to start somewhere. :-)

Re:author ?

[Brandybuck]

It was Al Gore! Just ask him...

Re:story of RFC origin

[buckeyeguy]

That's pretty handy, as it contains pointers to a lot of interesting early documents (e.g. RFC135, where the 2741 data terminal is described. It wasn't very web-friendly, as it didn't have the > and < characters, among others!)