Getting more information
Copyright (C) 1987, Charles L. Hedrick. Anyone may reproduce this
document, in whole or in part, provided that: (1) any copy or
republication of the entire document must show Rutgers University as
the source, and must include this notice; and (2) any other use of
this material must reference this manual and Rutgers University, and
the fact that the material is copyright by Charles Hedrick and is used
by permission.
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
rfc1012 somewhat fuller list of all RFC's
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.
rfc1010 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. It lists all the
offically defined well-known ports and lots of other
things.
rfc1009 NSFnet gateway specifications. A good overview of IP
routing and gateway technology.
rfc1001/2 netBIOS: networking for PC's
rfc973 update on domains
rfc959 FTP (file transfer)
rfc950 subnets
rfc937 POP2: protocol for reading mail on PC's
rfc894 how IP is to be put on Ethernet, see also rfc825
rfc882/3 domains (the database used to go from host names to
Internet address and back -- also used to handle UUCP
these days). See also rfc973
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
rip.doc details of the most commonly-used routing protocol
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.
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
rip.doc is available by anonymous FTP from topaz.rutgers.edu, as
/pub/tcp-ip-docs/rip.doc.
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
/topaz/pub/pub/tcp-ip-docs/rip.doc
Note that SRI-NIC has the entire set of RFC's and IEN's, but rutgers
and topaz have only those specifically mentioned above.
Back to the Index
Steven E. Newton /
<snewton@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu> / 1-20-94
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