Guide
What does RFC stand for?
Written by The metasystema editorial team · published · last reviewed · how we write these
RFC stands for "Request for Comments." It is the name of the numbered document series in which the internet's technical specifications are published — TCP, IP, HTTP, DNS, TLS and thousands more.
Despite the name, an RFC is not a draft
The name is a historical accident. In April 1969 Steve Crocker, then a graduate student working on the ARPANET, wrote up some notes on host software and needed a label that would not sound presumptuous to his colleagues. He chose "Request for Comments." The first document, RFC 1, was distributed by post.
The convention outlived its purpose. Today an RFC is a permanent, archived publication: once issued it is never edited, and comments on it take the form of an entirely new RFC that obsoletes or updates the old one.
Related terms
- IETF — the Internet Engineering Task Force, which produces most RFCs. Full explanation.
- RFC Editor — the body that edits, publishes and archives the series. Full explanation.
- BCP / STD / FYI — alternative numbering applied to some RFCs: BCP for best current practice, STD for full internet standards, FYI for older informational documents. A single BCP or STD number can cover several RFCs.
- Internet-Draft — the working document that precedes an RFC. Drafts expire and must never be cited as standards.
The other meaning you may have hit
Software teams frequently call their internal design proposals "RFCs" too — a document circulated to colleagues proposing a change and inviting review before implementation. Rust, Python (as PEPs) and many companies run processes like this. They are named after the IETF series but are unrelated to it, and they carry no official standing outside the organisation that wrote them.
More: What is an RFC, in detail · Look up any RFC number
Sources
This page paraphrases the primary documents below. Where they and this page disagree, they are right.