Request for Comments (RFC)

RFCs cover many topics related to the technical foundations of the internet, including the protocols used to deliver services, such as TCP, QUIC and Web Real-Time Communications.

Some RFCs are informational only, while others are actual standards. Depending on the topics they cover and their level of maturity, RFCs each receive one of the following designations:

• Internet Standard
• Proposed Standard
• Best Current Practice
• Experimental
• Informational
• Historic

An RFC that is being created as a standard goes through a period of development and multiple iterations of review In addition to the RFC document, the RFC Editor provides various information about the RFC. For example, the details for RFC 9293 include its status (Internet Standard), the RFCs that 9293 makes obsolete, the RFCs that 9293 updates and the organization that produced 9293 (IETF), among other types of information.

According to IETF, the review and revision that goes into creating a standard can get complicated because of several important challenges:

• Creating specifications that are of high technical quality is in itself a difficult process.
• The interests of all affected parties must be considered when developing specifications.
• The specifications must receive widespread community consensus.
• Evaluating the utility of a specification for the internet community can be difficult.

Despite these challenges, IETF strives to achieve a high degree of technical excellence during the standard review and revision process, while remaining open and fair and delivering the standards in a timely manner. Once a standard has gone through this process and has been finalized, it is then published through the RFC Editor, just like the nonstandard RFCs.

See also: World Wide Web Consortium, International Organization for Standardization and International Telecommunication Union.