Author traces the origins of Internet RFCs, from RFC 1 in 1969 to modern web protocols

The author recounts how working on a 3-D Secure payment integration led them to study RFCs 7515, 7516, and 7519, which define JWS, JWE, and JWT. They note that the JWT libraries used in common Go and Node.js services implement these RFCs, which are numbered sequentially from RFC 1 in 1969 and never change once published. The piece explains that everyday technologies such as IP, TCP, HTTP, TLS, and DNS are all defined in RFCs, and that these documents are what let a web request reach a site. The author also recalls learning about the foundations of the web through Lynx, a text-based browser from 1992, and an interactive version of the essay is available on their site.
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