RFC 118

RFC 118: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FACILITY DOCUMENTATION ✨

Network Working Group 🌸 Request for Comments: 118 Author: Richard Watson, Stanford Research Institute (ARC) 🦋 NIC number: 5830 💜 Date: 16 April 1971 📅 Category or status: not listed in the title block 🤷‍♀️ Obsoletes or updates: nothing is listed, so this one doesn't replace or update any earlier RFC 💅

INFORMATION REQUIRED FOR EACH SERVICE AVAILABLE TO THE NETWORK 🧚

okay so every site has to give two kinds of info for each service or process it offers over the Network 🎀

• i) information required by system programmers in order to establish a connection to the facility
• ii) information required by a user to gain access to and use the facility

these two basic kinds of info are what make up a "functional document" 📄 (see RFC 115, NIC (5822,) for a description of functional documents and recommended procedures for updating them) ✨

the info that user site system programmers need can be a detailed document, a reference to a document describing a protocol shared by several facilities, or some combo of the two 🫶 all the info they need has to be included, like connection socket numbers, message formats, and character set info 😭 two examples of system programmer type info are RFC 74, NIC (5417,) and RFC 105, NIC (5775,) prepared by James White of UCSB 🌈

the info that user site users need comes in three types:

• a) information unique to Network users of the facility
• b) information in common between Network users and server site users of the facility
• c) information unique to particular Network user site

type c) is prepared by the user site using the info the server site gave them 🔥 for example, keying conventions needed to send certain codes to the server site 💖

Future documentation will probably have types a) and b) integrated into one document 🧁 but at first, server sites will probably already have user manuals or docs for their local users, so they'll need to write a short doc with any extra info Network users need 📝 that extra info will vary, but it might include a different login or control card sequence, varying echo or syntax for user sites working character at a time or line at a time, server site or user site echoing, and so on 🙈 some features available to server site users might not be available to Network user site users, or certain features might behave differently 💀

besides all the types above, there should be instructions on how the user can get help or answers to questions about using the facility 🎀

info about how to get administrative access (charge numbers, etc.) to a site should be in the document ARPA Network Current Guides to Network Facilities, NIC (5148,) 💅 BBN is the one collecting this info 🫧 that document will then point to the functional documents that describe the available Network facilities in detail and how to use them ✨

even if there are no special conventions or info unique to a Network user as opposed to a server site user, you should say so explicitly so nobody gets confused or uncertain 🚨

NETWORK INFORMATION CENTER POLICY ON DISTRIBUTION AND UPDATING OF DOCUMENTATION 📚

the Network Information Center will distribute and maintain one copy of each functional document describing a facility in each Network Station NIC Collection 🧚 to make that work, they'd really appreciate it if 100 copies of each manual and each set of manual updates could be sent to the NIC whenever they come out 💖

users at sites who want their own copies of user docs can get them straight from the server site, or by copying the master in their local NIC Collection 🌸 so users know where to find extra copies, an address and a price (if there is one) should be included in the info about each facility 💜

[ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ] [ into the online RFC archives by Mirsad Todorovac 10/98 ]