Humorous RFCs

I knew there was something funny going on with all those RFC protocols!

The Internet RFCs aren’t all engineering technicalities. Some of them are meant to convey a message or commentary with a humorous tone. Here are some ‘classic’ examples:

RFC 527: ARPAWOCKY
RFC 748: Telnet Randomly-lose option
RFC 968: ‘Twas The Night Before Startup
RFC 1097: Telnet subliminal-message option
RFC 1121: Act one: the poems
RFC 1149: A standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
RFC 1216: Gigabit Network Economics and Paradigm Shifts
RFC 1217: Memo from the Consortium for Slow Commotion Research (CSCR)
RFC 1300: Remembrance of Things Past
RFC 1313: Today’s Programming for KRFC AM 1313 Internet Talk Radio
RFC 1437: The Extension of MIME Content-Types to a New Medium
RFC 1438: IETF Statements of Boredom
RFC 1605: SONET to Sonnet translation
RFC 1606: A Historical Perspective On The Usage Of IP Version 9
RFC 1607: A View from the 21st Century
RFC 1776: The Address is the Message
RFC 1882: The 12 days of technology before Christmas
RFC 1924: A compact representation of IPv6 addresses
RFC 1925: The 12 networking truths
RFC 1926: An experimental encapsulation of IP Datagrams on top of ATM
RFC 1927: Suggested additional MIME types for associating documents