Post #2822797
2024-12-17 16:01 UTC
@anticomposite@wikis.world @EdG@mastodon.social @simontatham@hachyderm.io Is there any form of humor more absolutely niche than IETF RFC jokes? Like these are for an audience of dozens…luckily we are all on Fedi.
I was actually online on the morning of April 1, 1990 when the canonical example, “RFC 1149 - A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers” dropped*, and it is deeply embedded in my headcanon Internet Timeline of Important Events. But I run into supposed industry professionals (even network and security admins!) who are completely unaware of this seminal document with alarming frequency.
(*) the standard has since updated twice, once to add Quality of Service and once to add IPv6 support. A real world implementation was only partially successful, as latency and packet loss were substantial. The whole protocol is nerdvana and the commitment to the bit is exemplary…
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Replies (1)
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@simontatham@hachyderm.io 2024-12-17 16:06
@dwenius@toot.cat @anticomposite@wikis.world @EdG@mastodon.social avian carriers are all very well, but I think 418 I'm A Teapot is more iconic. I proposed a 1st April RFC myself once, but it wasn't accepted. At the time SSH-2 was still considering a "none" cipher, for countries outlawing encryption: you wouldn't encrypt, but would still MAC, so the spooks could read but not hijack your session. I proposed adding the "rot13" cipher instead, to protect network-monitoring sysadmins from movie spoilers and distractingly juicy gossip.