, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual. (taken from http://www.ietf.org/)The Internet Engineering And Planning GroupThe following readings are included to provide more information on these organisations.Information on Internet organisations :ISOC The Internet Society SLOW SITE: http://www.isoc.org/IEPG the Internet engineering and planning group: http://www.iepg.org/2.3 RFC’sA) Request for comment (RFCs)The standards used on the Internet are specified in documents called Request for Comments (RFCs). (Not all RFCs are standards). Someone proposing a new Internet standard will write and submit an RFC. The RFC will be distributed to the Internet community who will comment on it and may suggest changes. The standard proposed by the RFC will be adopted as a standard if the community is happy with it.RFCs are assigned numbers, Figure 1 includes RFC numbers that correspond to the different protocols. If you have access to the Internet you can anonymously ftp RFCs from a number of well-known sites (including archie.au).RFCs can and often are very technical and hard to understand unless you are familiar with the area (the RFC for ftp is about 80 pages long).The following links might prove useful:Australian FTP archive of RFCs : ftp://archie.au/rfc/Ohio State University's RFC archive : http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/information/rfc.htmla UK based RFC archive with a search engine : http://www.connect.org.uk/techwatch/standards/index.html2.3 TCP/IP PROTOCOLSA) The protocols of TCP/IPTCP/IP is an example of a layered communications suite. The advantage of this layered approach is that the protocols at higher levels can safely assume that the lower level protocols will carry out their responsibilities. For example TCP does not need to know anything about the hardware being used because it is h...
