Ode to RFCs and Jon Postel

The Editor of the Internet

Introduction

So while there is much debate around people like Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cert, we should also include “The Editor of the Internet”: Jon Postel. Jon was born on 6 August 1943 and died in October 1998. Even up to his death, he was the editor of the Request for Comment (RFC) documents and administered the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). He has since, in 2012, been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society, and the foundation he has left is as strong as any foundation ever created, in fact, it’s the foundation for our Cyber Age.

So, as we will see, the Internet has built around many of the systems and protocols that it needed in 1981. The Internet and Web then grew without the constraints of governments and standards agencies, but, with its scope now threatening societies with the Dark Web and terrorists sending encrypted messages, politicians now feel it's time to put controls on its usage — are they too late?

Should they have got involved in 1981, and built in the mechanisms that they require now, and can they actually change the core of the Internet?

RFCs

RFC (Request For Comment) documents are a way for standards such as for HTTP and email to become accepted quickly…