Printing RFCs

Tomasino recently wrote[1] about the joy of reading old RFCs, which brought back

happy memories for me.

When I was a student, we were allocated a particular printing quota each

semester. You could print up to however many hundred pages for free, and if you

wanted to do any more than that, you had to pay for more credit. The quota was

renewed each semester, and any unused surplus was simply lost rather than being

rolled over or paid out.

My course work actually required very little printing, so I always had a hefty

surplus, so twice a year I would take the opportunity to print off whatever very

large but interesting nerdy things I could find on the internet. This sometimes

included RFCs. I know for a fact that I printed the SMTP and IMAP RFCs, and had

them cheaply spiral bound with clear plastic covers at the university print

shop. I would read them on the almost hour long train ride I took into the city

and back each day. Possibly I printed some others as well, but the email ones

are the ones I'm sure about.

Many RFCs are surprisingly readable, and if you've been mucking around with

programming and networking for a few years you will probably be able to learn a

thing or two about how some of the services you use every day work under the

hood, without too much trouble.

I like them because they make it clear how simple, at the end of the day, a lot

of the internet is. Obviously the devil is in the details, but for many

purposes, the internet is just computers sending ASCII text to one another, one

line at a time, in very stilted, formal conversations. They often literally say

HELO and BYE to each other. The scripts for these conversations were written,

at least in the early days, by small groups of people just trying to figure out

something that seemed like it would work well at the time, often without any

grand plans or visions. There's a very humble, human feel to a lot of this

early net stuff. Check it out sometime.

[1] gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/tomasino/phlog/20180301-1436