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Digression #1: RFCs and Internet Documentation
In this subject, we concentrate fairly heavily on the protocols and
architectures used in the global Internet.
Every aspect of the Internet is documented in a series of
documents called "RFCs" (Request For Comment). RFCs are the means
by which new technologies are introduced in the Internet: after
suitable research work has been done, the new proposals are
published as an RFC. On the other hand, some RFCs document standard
Internet protocols. RFCs are usually in plain text form.
Once an RFC is published, it is not changed. However, it may be
"obsoleted" by later work. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to
"browse" RFCs to discover which RFC is the latest on a particular
topic, although there are various Web Indexes which can be useful.
All RFCs are available on-line on the Internet. In Australia, they
are available at several sites: in particular your lecturer's
favourite (and fastest) RFC archives are at:
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/rfc/
ftp://munnari.oz.au/rfc
ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/internet-standards/
You will probably (later) need to learn how to download RFCs to
answer some of the assignment questions.
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