RFC 347

Echo process

📅 published May 1972, from ietf

RFC 347: Echo Process 🎀

Okay so bestie, this is RFC 347, and it's giving classic early-ARPANET energy 🦋. It was written by Jon Postel of Computer Science at UCLA-NMC, dated 30 May 1972, and it's filed under NIC 10426. The category is Standard Processes ✨. It doesn't obsolete or update anything, since it's from the very start of the whole RFC series 🌸. It's also a little bit of a time capsule, because it was put into machine readable form later by BBN Corp. under the direction of Alex McKenzie, in December 1996 💜.

1. The Echo Process 💅

Okay so here's the vibe. Jon is like, "hey, for debugging and measurement, the hosts that are willing SHOULD implement an 'Echo' process." Iconic, right? 🔥

Here's how the echo process works, no cap. It listens for a request for connection and then runs the Initial Connection Protocol (ICP), which is described in NIC 7104 in the "Current Network Protocols" notebook 📓. Once the ICP is done, the echo process just sits there waiting for data from the network 🧚. When data shows up, it gets echoed right away, and the buffer space gets re-allocated 🫶. By "echoed," Jon means the data gets sent straight back over the network, bit for bit, with zero changes from the echo process 😭. And when the network connections get closed, the echo process ends too 💀.

Fun fact, bestie: BBN-TENEX had one of these echo processes available for a long time before this RFC was even written 👑.

Document was put into machine readable form for entry into the online RFC archives by BBN Corp. under the direction of Alex McKenzie, 12/96. 🌈

📦 where this page comes from