Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide

Off-Track Documents

Not all of the available RFCs out there are standards-track documents. In fact, many of the RFCs currently floating around are not even on their way to becoming sanctioned Internet standards in any shape or form. Such a document may be an informational notice provided by a vendor, a historical note or procedure, or an experiment that is simply being documented for everybody to see.

In all of these cases, the RFCs are simply provided as public knowledge, and nobody is required to implement any of them. In some cases, vendors who implement the mechanisms detailed in these documents may actually cause interoperability problems.