Editing Internet Standard (section)

===Internet Standard===
An Internet Standard is characterized by a high degree of technical maturity and by a generally held belief that the specified protocol or service provides significant benefit to the Internet community. Generally Internet Standards cover interoperability of systems on the Internet through defining protocols, message formats, schemas, and languages. 
An Internet Standard ensures that hardware and software produced by different vendors can work together. Having a standard makes it much easier to develop software and hardware that link different networks because software and hardware can be developed one layer at a time. Normally, the standards used in data communication are called protocols.

All Internet Standards are given a number in the STD series.  The series was summarized in its first document, STD 1 (RFC 5000), until 2013, but this practice was retired in RFC 7100. The definitive list of Internet Standards is now maintained by the RFC Editor.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.rfc-editor.org/standards |title=Official Internet Protocol Standards |access-date=2018-03-19 |archive-date=2018-03-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180315032751/http://www.rfc-editor.org/standards |url-status=live }}</ref>

Documents submitted to the IETF editor and accepted as an RFC are not revised; if the document has to be changed, it is submitted again and assigned a new RFC number. When an RFC becomes an Internet Standard (STD), it is assigned an STD number but retains its RFC number. When an Internet Standard is updated, its number is unchanged but refers to a different RFC or set of RFCs. For example, in 2007 RFC 3700 was an Internet Standard (STD 1) and in May 2008 it was replaced with RFC 5000. RFC 3700 received ''Historic'' status, and RFC 5000 became STD 1.

The list of Internet standards was originally published as STD 1 but this practice has been abandoned in favor of an online list maintained by the RFC Editor.<ref>{{IETF RFC|7100}}</ref>