Microsoft Windows graphic

TCP/IP RFCs

The standards for TCP/IP are published in a series of documents called Requests for Comments (RFCs). RFCs are an evolving series of reports, proposals for protocols, and protocol standards that describe the internal workings of TCP/IP and the Internet.

Although TCP/IP standards are always published as RFCs, not all RFCs specify standards. RFCs are authored by individuals who voluntarily write and submit a draft proposal for a new protocol or specification to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and other working groups. Submitted drafts are first reviewed by a technical expert, a task force, or an RFC editor, and then assigned a status.

If a draft passes this initial review stage, it is circulated to the larger Internet community for a period of further comment and review and assigned an RFC number. This RFC number remains constant.

If changes are made to the proposed specification, drafts that are revised or updated are circulated by using a new RFC (a number higher than the original RFC number) to identify more recent documents.

There are five status assignments for RFCs in the standards process, as shown in the following table.

Status Description
Standard protocol An official standard protocol of the Internet.
Draft standard protocol Under active consideration and review to become a standard protocol.
Proposed standard protocol A protocol that in the future might become a standard protocol.
Experimental protocol A protocol designed for experimental purposes. An experimental protocol is not intended for operational use.
Informational protocol A protocol developed by another standards organization that is included for the convenience of the Internet community.
Historic protocol Protocols that have been superceded or obsoleted by other protocols.

Related RFCs for TCP/IP

The following table shows the RFCs supported by the TCP/IP protocol and supporting services.

RFC number Title
768 User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
783 Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)
791 Internet Protocol (IP)
792 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)
793 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
816 Fault Isolation and Recovery
826 Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)
854 Telnet Protocol (TELNET)
862 Echo Protocol (ECHO)
863 Discard Protocol (DISCARD)
864 Character Generator Protocol (CHARGEN)
865 Quote of the Day Protocol (QUOTE)
867 Daytime Protocol (DAYTIME)
894 IP over Ethernet
919 Broadcasting Internet Datagrams
922 Broadcasting Internet Datagrams in the Presence of Subnets
950 Internet Standard Subnetting Procedure
959 File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
1001 Protocol Standard for a NetBIOS Service on a TCP/UDP Transport: Concepts and Methods
1002 Protocol Standard for a NetBIOS Service on a TCP/UDP Transport: Detailed Specifications
1009 Requirements for Internet Gateways
1034 Domain Names – Concepts and Facilities
1035 Domain Names – Implementation and Specification
1042 IP over Token Ring
1055 A Nonstandard for Transmission of IP Datagrams Over Serial Lines: SLIP
1065 Structure and Identification of Management Information for TCP/IP-based Internets
1112 Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP)
1122 Requirements for Internet Hosts – Communication Layers
1123 Requirements for Internet Hosts – Application and Support
1144 Compressing TCP/IP Headers for Low-Speed Serial Links
1157 Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
1179 Line Printer Daemon Protocol
1188 IP over FDDI
1191 Path MTU Discovery
1201 IP over ARCNET
1256 ICMP Router Discovery Messages
1323 TCP Extensions for High Performance
1332 PPP Internet Protocol Control Protocol (IPCP)
1518 An Architecture for IP Address Allocation with CIDR
1519 Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR): An Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy
1534 Interoperation Between DHCP and BOOTP
1542 Clarifications and Extensions for the Bootstrap Protocol
1552 PPP Internetwork Packet Exchange Control Protocol (IPXCP)
1661 The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)
1662 PPP in HDLC-like Framing
1748 IEEE 802.5 MIB using SMIv2
1749 IEEE 802.5 Station Source Routing MIB using SMIv2
1812 Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers
1828 IP Authentication using Keyed MD5
1829 ESP DES-CBC Transform
1851 ESP Triple DES-CBC Transform
1852 IP Authentication using Keyed SHA
1878 Variable Length Subnet Table For IPv4
1886 DNS Extensions to Support IP Version 6
1994 PPP Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP)
1995 Incremental Zone Transfer in DNS
1996 A Mechanism for Prompt DNS Notification of Zone Changes
2018 TCP Selective Acknowledgment Options
2085 HMAC-MD5 IP Authentication with Replay Prevention
2104 HMAC: Keyed Hashing for Message Authentication
2131 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
2136 Dynamic Updates in the Domain Name System (DNS UPDATE)
2181 Clarifications to the DNS Specification
2236 Internet Group Management Protocol, Version 2
2308 Negative Caching of DNS Queries (DNS NCACHE)
2401 Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol
2402 IP Authentication Header
2406 IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)
2581 TCP Congestion Control

Obtaining RFCs

You can obtain RFCs from the RFC Editor Web site. This Web site is currently maintained by members of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI), who publish a classified listing of all RFCs. RFCs are classified as one of the following: Approved Internet standard, proposed Internet standard (circulated in draft form for review), Internet best practices, or For Your Information (FYI) document.

Note