Guide

What is the RFC Editor?

Written by The metasystema editorial team · published 22 August 2026 · last reviewed 23 August 2026 · how we write these

The RFC Editor is the function responsible for editing, publishing and permanently archiving the RFC series. The IETF decides what a specification says; the RFC Editor turns the approved document into a published RFC, assigns its number, and guarantees that it stays available and unchanged forever.

What it actually does

• Editorial preparation. Copy-editing approved drafts for clarity, consistent terminology and house style before publication.
• Number assignment. RFC numbers are issued sequentially at publication time and are never reused or reassigned.
• Publication and format. Since RFC 8650-era tooling changed in 2019, RFCs are published from an XML source in several renderings — HTML, PDF and plain text — rather than the fixed-width text-only format the series used for its first fifty years.
• Archival. Maintaining the canonical index and making every RFC ever published permanently retrievable at a stable URL.
• Errata. Because published text is immutable, reported errors are recorded in a separate errata database and reviewed for approval.

The four streams

Not everything in the series comes from the IETF. The RFC Editor publishes four streams, and each RFC's header records which one produced it:

• IETF stream — working group and IETF-approved documents. The large majority, and the only stream that produces standards-track RFCs.
• IAB stream — architectural statements from the Internet Architecture Board.
• IRTF stream — output from Internet Research Task Force research groups.
• Independent submission stream — documents from anyone, reviewed by the Independent Submissions Editor. Informational or experimental only.

Who runs it

The role was performed personally by Jon Postel from 1969 until his death in 1998, then by the Information Sciences Institute at USC, and is now organised as the RFC Editor function under the RFC Series Working Group and the RFC Series Approval Board, with funding administered through the IETF Administration LLC. Its site, rfc-editor.org, is the authoritative source for RFC text, the index and the errata database — and the source of the data indexed on this site.

Why immutability matters

A specification is only useful as a reference point if everyone reading it sees the same words. Because the RFC Editor never revises published text, a citation to "RFC 2119 section 4" means exactly the same thing in 1997 and today. The cost of that guarantee is the obsoletes/updates machinery: to change a standard you publish a new document, and readers must check the relationship chain. Every RFC page here shows that chain at the top.

More: What is an RFC? · What is the IETF?