RFC (Request For Comments) is a kind of publication from the technology community. It is usually used by Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry to communicate something to the public and especially for the community itself. In The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) community, who focused on internet technology, RFC contains technical and organizational notes about the Internet. There is an RFC No. 1925 by IETF, explaining about The Twelve Networking Truths. I personally got a very good impression about this RFC since I studied for my bachelor degree in 2007, because it shows the fundamental truths in computer networking, that interestingly can be applied to my daily life.
The original document can be found at https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1925.txt.
I am trying to quote the document on this post. Here we go:
(1) It Has To Work.
(2) No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority, you can’t increase the speed of light.
(2a)(corollary). No matter how hard you try, you can’t make a baby in much less than 9 months. Trying to speed this up *might* make it slower, but it won’t make it happen any quicker.
(3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
(4) Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational network.
(5) It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases this is a bad idea.
(6) It is easier to move a problem around(for example, by moving the problem to a different part of the overall network architecture) than it is to solve it.
(6a)(corollary). It is always possible to add another level of indirection.
(7) It is always something
(7a)(corollary). Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two(you can’t have all three).
(8) It is more complicated than you think.
(9) For all resources, whatever it is, you need more.
(9a)(corollary) Every networking problem always takes longer to solve than it seems like it should.
(10) One size never fits all.
(11) Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works.
(11a)(corollary). See rule 6a.
(12) In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.