Requests for Comment—RFCs for short—are not unique to the Internet. But Internet RFCs themselves are unique, and Joyce Reynolds helped shape them into the foundational publications of the Internet that they are today. Reynolds passed away in 2015, leaving in her wake an entire system and way of communicating that has documented, shaped, and enriched the evolution of the Internet.
RFCs are known primarily for their role in helping set standards and record Internet history, but also for their occasional use for banter among the Internet’s standard-setting community. Whenever the Internet functions seamlessly, it’s because RFCs have been used to solve technical problems and share their solutions for other engineers to use. They underpin every email, every attachment, and every video call you make.
Today, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) administers the 9,000+ sequentially numbered RFCs, which fall into categories ranging from Proposed Standard to Experimental to Informational. But when Joyce Reynolds began working on them, she faced chaos. At the time, she was working alongside her mentor, Jon Postel, at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute. Internet pioneer, Vint Cerf, in Informational RFC#2555, described Postel and Reynolds’ collaboration: “They functioned in unison like a matched pair of superconducting electrons – and superconductors they were of the RFC series. For all practical purposes, it was impossible to tell which of the two had edited any particular RFC.”
When Postel passed away in 1998, Reynolds took on the role of co-leading the RFC Editor function, a position she held until 2006. In addition to being known for her contributions to the written word of the Internet, she was also a prolific speaker, passionate about spreading the word of the Internet globally. “Joyce had such a love of life, energy, and adventure,” remembers her sister Diane Reynolds, who loved her sister’s sharing of these interactions and experiences.
