This directory contains documents describing the major protocols. There are literally hundreds of documents, so we have chosen the ones that seem most important. Internet standards are called RFC's. RFC stands for Request for Comment. A proposed standard is initially issued as a proposal, and given an RFC number. When it is finally accepted, it is added to Official Internet Protocols, but it is still referred to by the RFC number. We have also included two IEN's. (IEN's used to be a separate classification for more informal documents. This classification no longer exists -- RFC's are now used for all official Internet documents, and a mailing list is used for more informal reports.) The convention is that whenever an RFC is revised, the revised version gets a new number. This is fine for most purposes, but it causes problems with two documents: Assigned Numbers and Official Internet Protocols. These documents are being revised all the time, so the RFC number keeps changing. You will have to look in rfc- index.txt to find the number of the latest edition. Anyone who is seriously interested in TCP/IP should read the RFC describing IP (791). RFC 1009 is also useful. It is a specification for gateways to be used by NSFnet. As such, it contains an overview of a lot of the TCP/IP technology. You should probably also read the description of at least one of the application protocols, just to get a feel for the way things work. Mail is probably a good one (821/822). TCP (793) is of course a very basic specification. However the spec is fairly complex, so you should only read this when you have the time and patience to think about it carefully. Fortunately, the author of the major RFC's (Jon Postel) is a very good writer. The TCP RFC is far easier to read than you would expect, given the complexity of what it is describing. You can look at the other RFC's as you become curious about their subject matter.
Here is a list of the documents you are more likely to want:
rfc-index list of all RFC's
rfc1065/6/7
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). A protocol
to get information from gateways and hosts, to monitor
failures, and to reconfigure gateways and hosts
remotely. This protocol will be the foundation for
network management activities involving TCP/IP. RFC
1028 documents the Simple Gateway Monitoring Protocol
(SGMP), which is an interim protocol on which SNMP is
based. SGMP will be replaced by SNMP during 1988/89.
rfc1064,1056,937
protocols for reading mail on PC's
rfc1062 Assigned Numbers. If you are working with TCP/IP, you
will probably want a hardcopy of this as a reference.
It's not very exciting to read, but is essential. It
lists all the offically defined well-known ports and
lots of other things.
rfc1059 Network Time Protocol. A protocol for synchronizing
the time on all your machines. Also allows you to get
time from one of the national time standards.
rfc1058 Routing Information Protocol. Details of the most
commonly-used routing protocol.
rfc1057 RPC. A protocol for remote procedure calls. Sun's
Network File System is based on this. The actual NFS
protocol specification is currently available only from
Sun. Sun supplies a public domain implementation of
RPC. Aside from its use by NFS (whose implementation
is not public domain), RPC has been used by a number of
groups for building server/client systems such as
remote database servers. See also rfc1014.
rfc1042 IP encapsulation for IEEE 802 networks. This will be
used for the IEEE token ring, broadband, etc. In
principle it seems that this would cover Ethernet,
since Ethernet is IEEE 802.3. However the normal
encapsulation used on Ethernet is defined by rfc894.
rfc1032/3/4/5
domains (the database used to go from host names to
Internet address and back -- also used to handle UUCP
these days). This includes protocol standards, as well
as information directed at people who are going to have
to set up a domain name server. Every site should have
a copy of these documents.
rfc1014 XDR: External Data Representation Standard. This is
part of the specifications for Sun's RPC protocol (rfc
1057), which is the protocol underlying Sun's Network
File System.
rfc1013 X Window System Protocol, Version 11. Documents the
most commonly used remote window system.
rfc1012 list of all rfc's below 1000, with somewhat more
information than rfc-index.
rfc1011 Official Protocols. It's useful to scan this to see
what tasks protocols have been built for. This defines
which rfc's are actual standards, as opposed to
requests for comments.
rfc1009 NSFnet gateway specifications. A good overview of IP
routing and gateway technology.
rfc1001/2 netBIOS: networking for PC's
rfc959 FTP (file transfer)
rfc950 subnets
rfc894 how IP is to be put on Ethernet, see also rfc825
rfc854/5 telnet - protocol for remote logins
rfc826 ARP - protocol for finding out Ethernet addresses
rfc821/2 mail
rfc814 names and ports - general concepts behind well-known
ports
rfc793 TCP
rfc792 ICMP
rfc791 IP
rfc768 UDP
ien-116 old name server (still needed by several kinds of
system)
ien-48 the Catenet model, general description of the
philosophy behind TCP/IP
The following documents are somewhat more specialized.
rfc1055 SLIP (IP for dialup lines)
rfc1054 IP multicasting
rfc1048 Bootp, a protocol often used to allow diskless systems
to find their IP address.
rfc813 window and acknowledgement strategies in TCP
rfc815 datagram reassembly techniques
rfc816 fault isolation and resolution techniques
rfc817 modularity and efficiency in implementation
rfc879 the maximum segment size option in TCP
rfc896 congestion control
rfc827,888,904,975,985
EGP and related issues
To those of you who may be reading this document remotely instead of at
Rutgers: The most important rfc's have been collected into a three-volume
set, the DDN Protocol Handbook. It is available from the DDN Network
Information Center, SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park,
California 94025 (telephone: 800-235-3155). You should be able to get them
via anonymous FTP from sri-nic.arpa. File names are:
rfc's:
rfc:rfc-index.txt
rfc:rfcxxx.txt
IEN's:
ien:ien-index.txt
ien:ien-xxx.txt
Sites with access to UUCP but not FTP may be able to retreive them via UUCP
from UUCP host rutgers. The file names would be
rfc's:
/topaz/pub/pub/tcp-ip-docs/rfc-index.txt
/topaz/pub/pub/tcp-ip-docs/rfcxxx.txt
IEN's:
/topaz/pub/pub/tcp-ip-docs/ien-index.txt
/topaz/pub/pub/tcp-ip-docs/ien-xxx.txt
Note that SRI-NIC has the entire set of rfc's and IEN's, but rutgers and
topaz have only those specifically mentioned above.