Informational RFCs
Sometimes a vendor or consultant will choose to share information with the Internet community, and this information can be published as an Informational RFC.
Informational RFCs may be anything, ranging from the simple to the extraordinarily complex. For example, there are some Informational RFCs that advocate certain technologies or make observations about specific implementations. Conversely, some complex protocols (such as NFS) are also published as Informational RFCs, in the hopes that doing so will lead to a broader adoption of the proprietary service.
Sometimes a protocol that is published as an Informational RFC will be adopted on a widescale level. For example, Gopher (RFC 1436) and Ph (RFC 2378) have both achieved a large number of implementations over the years, although both of these protocols were published as Informational RFCs.
Get Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
