Steve Crocker
More info
- Born
- Known for
- RFC 1, Network Working Group
- Awards
- Internet Hall of Fame 2012
The UCLA student who wrote RFC 1 and picked such a modest name for the series that it is still in use more than fifty years later.
In spring 1969 a handful of graduate students from the first ARPANET sites had been asked to work out how the host computers should talk to one another. Nobody had given them any authority, and nobody wanted to tread on the senior researchers' toes. So on 7 April 1969 Crocker wrote up a set of notes titled "Host Software" and called it a Request for Comments — in the bathroom, by his own account, so as not to wake his housemates.
The group he led, the Network Working Group, went on to design NCP. The format outlived everything else: the RFC series is still how internet standards are published. Much later Crocker chaired ICANN's board from 2011 to 2017.