comp.os.linux.networking

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.networking, in
article <5b9ha5xt5l.ln2@news.sebs.org.in>, Balwinder S Dheeman wrote:

>Moe Trin wrote:

>> A suggestion for you. Go to ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/ and get a
>> copy of the rfc-index.txt file

>> Of the 5000+ RFCs that have been issued/released, only 88 are
>> classified as "STANDARD", though a lot more are drafts of standards
>> or proposed as standards. Looking at the titles often gives an
>> indication of some highly useful information.

>Moreover, it is quite confusing which of the RFC are interrelated;
>what the heck RFC numbers are doing; all these I think, are useless
>version numbers. Which of the RFC's succeeds and, or obsoletes which
>one, are few questions have not been addressed by any of these RFC's.

2026 The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3. S. Bradner. October
1996. (Format: TXT=86731 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC1602, RFC1871)
(Updated by RFC3667, RFC3668, RFC3932, RFC3979, RFC3978) (Also
BCP0009) (Status: BEST CURRENT PRACTICE)

RFC2026 would be a good starting place. Then look at that rfc-index.txt
file I mentioned above (where this entry came from)

ftp> dir rfc-in*
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
-rw-r--r-- 1 ftpuser ftpusers 4037 Mar 10 02:30 rfc-index-latest.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 ftpuser ftpusers 862967 Mar 10 07:06 rfc-index.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 ftpuser ftpusers 6260122 Mar 10 02:40 rfc-index.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 ftpuser ftpusers 14316 Aug 3 2006 rfc-index.xsd
226 Listing completed.

(that was Monday evening UTC), and a lot will become obvious. (Note that
virtually all of the 5000+ RFCs are also in that directory.) The listing
for RFC2026 above shows that it replaced RFC1602 and RFC1871...

1602 The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 2. Internet
Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Steering Group. March 1994.
(Format: TXT=88465 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC1310) (Obsoleted by RFC2026)
(Updated by RFC1871) (Status: INFORMATIONAL)

1871 Addendum to RFC 1602 -- Variance Procedure. J. Postel. November
1995. (Format: TXT=7747 bytes) (Obsoleted by RFC2026) (Updates
RFC1602, RFC1603) (Status: HISTORIC)

and in turn has been updated by RFC3667, RFC3668, RFC3932, RFC3979, and
RFC3978.

3667 IETF Rights in Contributions. S. Bradner. February 2004. (Format:
TXT=43297 bytes) (Obsoleted by RFC3978) (Updates RFC2026) (Status:
BEST CURRENT PRACTICE)

3668 Intellectual Property Rights in IETF Technology. S. Bradner.
February 2004. (Format: TXT=41365 bytes) (Obsoleted by RFC3979)
(Updates RFC2026, RFC2028) (Status: BEST CURRENT PRACTICE)

3932 The IESG and RFC Editor Documents: Procedures. H. Alvestrand.
October 2004. (Format: TXT=17093 bytes) (Updates RFC2026, RFC3710)
(Also BCP0092) (Status: BEST CURRENT PRACTICE)

and so on. Yes, it is not as simple as it could be, but given the world
wide source of the documents and the fact that the subjects are still
evolving, it's probably the best you can do. I normally grab a copy of
the rfc-index.txt file monthly, and do a 'diff' to the previous version
to see what has changed. In the past, I also spent several evenings
just scanning this file to see what was there, and made a list of those
RFCs that I needed more information about. Also note that these
particular documents also MAY list a 'BCP' number - and that is a
separate numbering scheme which consists of the "latest version" of a
referred document. (There is also a 'STD' series for STANDARDs in
addition to the BCP series for BEST CURRENT PRACTICE documents.)

I'm not sure what you mean by "what the heck RFC numbers are doing".
Are you referring to the now obsolete RFC1700?

1700 Assigned Numbers. J. Reynolds, J. Postel. October 1994. (Format:
TXT=458860 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC1340) (Obsoleted by RFC3232)
(Status: HISTORIC)

RFC3232 replaced this family of "Assigned Numbers" documents in 2002
with a series of web pages - try http://www.iana.org/assignments/

Old guy