RFCs of interest to CIS 456 and related courses:

Some of these are of interest in CIS 456.
Most are of interest only in more advanced courses. 
E.g. in CIS 656 or ``QoS in the Internet'', or 
``Advanced Networking''.

RFCs can be obtained from the website of the IETF. (www.ietf.org).

The ONLY ones that will be compulsory reading are the first page of 
RFC 1700 and  RFC 3232 (entirely) (which is very small).

Homework: get RFC 1700 and read the first page. Find out that RFC has
been ``obsoleted'' and has been replaced by RFC 3232. Get RFC 3232 and
read the whole thing.

RFC 1700 (Assigned Numbers, Historical)
RFC 3232 (Assigned Numbers, pointer to IANA)
          www.iana.org
         (Also go to the IETF site, RFC Document Database, search for 
          ``Assigned Numbers'')

RFC  791 (the IP protocol, as of Sept 1981. Most is still valid.) 
         Read after we have covered Comer Chapter 7.
RFC  768 (the UDP protocol, as of Aug 1980. Pretty much still the standard!)
         Read after we have covered Comer Chapter 11.
RFC  793 (the TCP protocol, as of Sept 1981. A lot is still valid.)
         Read after we have covered Comer Chapter 12.
RFC 1122 (Lots of interesting stuff, updates on RFC 791 and RFC 793, etc).
RFC 2581 (TCP Congestion Control)

For the real fanatics:

RFC  792 (ICMP),
RFC  896 (Nagle's Algorithm)
         People interested in Nagle's algorithm may also want to read
         Greg Minshall's Dec 18, 1998 ietf draft 
         ``A Proposed Modification to Nagle's Algorithm''.
         See the variable snd_sml in the Linux TCP code.
RFC 1323 (Lots of updates on previous stuff. Some of it has been updated
          again in later RFCs! But more of it is still valid!).
RFC 1812 (Requirements for IPv4 Routers)
RFC 2309 (Stuff on Queue Management, Congestion Avoidance)

RFC 2001 These two are ``obsoleted'' but may still be of interest.
RFC 2582 Various aspects of TCP congestion control, early NewReno, etc. 

RFC  959 (FTP)

Various RFCs for people with special interests:

RFC 1112 (IP Multicast. August 1989)

RFC 2488 (TCP over Satellite)
RFC 2768 (TCP over Satellite)
RFC 3481 (TCP over Wireless)

RFC 3540 (ECN)
RFC 3168 (ECN)
RFC 2481 (ECN, of historical interest only)
RFC 2018 (SACK, Selective Acknowledgements)
RFC 3517 (SACK, Loss Recovery)

RFC 1812 (Requirements for Routers)
RFC 1716 (Requirements for Routers, historical)
RFC 1122 (Requirements for hosts)
RFC 1123 (Requirements for hosts)

RFC 1142 (IS-IS)
RFC 1267 (BGP)
RFC 2328 (OSPF v2)
RFC 2453 (RIP v2)
RFC 1058 (RIP, of historical interest only).

RFC 3561 (AODV)

RFC 2917 (MPLS, VPN)
RFC 3031 (MPLS, Architecture)
RFC 3356 (MPLS< Applicability)

RFC 2401 (Security)

RFC 1633 (Integrated Services)
RFC 2205 (RSVP)
RFC 2475 (DiffServ, Architecture)
RFC 2474 (DiffServ, Headers)
RFC 2430 (DiffServ, Provider Architecture)
RFC 2698 (Two Rate, Three Color marker)
RFC 3140 (DiffServ, Per Hop Behaviors)
RFC 2597 (Assured Forwarding)
RFC 3247 (Expedited Forwarding)
RFC 3246 (Expedited Forwarding, PHB)

RFC 2582 (NewReno, obsoleted)
RFC 3782 (NewReno)

RFC 2960 (SCTP)
RFC 3257 (SCTP)
RFC 3286 (SCTP)

RFC 3513 (IPv6)