Recall from Section 1 that Internet standards are specified in documents called Requests For Comments (RFCs). Although RFCs can be terse and technical, reading them is critical to understanding Internet operation.
The first RFC we'll look at is RFC 1034, Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities.
I've reformated a number of important RFCs to make them more suitable for Web presentation. If you'd like, click here to see RFC 1034 as it is distributed by InterNIC. This is a large document (123KB), and we're not going to view the RFCs in this format, but you may wish to see what the original documents look like.
In the Encyclopedia's Web format, each RFC has a top page containing a table of contents that leads to Web pages containing the rest of the document.
Now, click here and read the top page of RFC 1034, then come Back here.
Questions? Click here to send me some email.
Now, click here to continue.