RFC 1796 (rfc1796) - Page 2 of 4
Not All RFCs are Standards
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1796 Not All RFCs are Standards April 1995
adopted as an Internet Standard, it is given the additional label
"STD xxxx", but it keeps its RFC number and its place in the RFC
series.
It is important to note that the relationship of STD numbers to RFC
numbers is not one to one. STD numbers identify protocols, RFC
numbers identify documents. Sometimes more than one document is used
to specify a Standard protocol.
In order to further increase the publicity of the standardization
status, the IAB proposes the following actions:
Use the STD number, rather than just the RFC numbers, in the cross
references between standard tracks documents,
Utilize the "web" hypertext technology to publicize the state of
the standardization process.
More precisely, we propose to add to the current RFC repository an
"html" version of the "STD-1" document, i.e., the list of Internet
standards. We are considering the extension of this document to also
describes actions in progress, i.e., standards track work at the
"proposed" or "draft" stage.
A Single Archive
The IAB believes that the community benefitted significantly from
having a single archival document series. Documents are easy to find
and to retrieve, and file servers are easy to organize. This has
been very important over the long term. Experience of the past shows
that subseries, or series of limited scope, tend to vanish from the
network. And, there is no evidence that alternate document schemes
would result in less confusion.
Moreover, we believe that the presence of additional documents does
not actually hurt the standardization process. The solution which we
propose is to better publicize the "standard" status of certain
documents, which is made relatively easy by the advent of networked
hypertext technologies.
Rather Document Than Ignore
The RFC series includes some documents which are informational by
nature and other documents which describe experiences. A problem of
perception occurs when such a document "looks like" an official
protocol specification. Misguided vendors may claim conformance to
it, and misguided clients may actually believe that they are buying
an Internet standard.
Huitema, Postel & Crocker