Search help

Search covers the title, abstract, keywords and the complete text of every RFC. Type words, add operators or filters as needed, and press Enter. Every example below is a link that runs the query.

Basics

congestion control	Both words, anywhere in the RFC. Words of five letters or more also match longer words: congest finds congestion. Shorter words match exactly, so quic does not find quick.
"congestion window"	Quoted words must appear together, in that order.
9000, rfc 791	A number opens that RFC directly.

Operators

quic OR http3	Either word. `OR` must be upper case and applies to the two words around it.
quic -quickstart	Exclude RFCs mentioning a word.
"key words" -2119	Operators combine with phrases.

Searching one field

title:semantics	Only the title. title:"http semantics" for a phrase.
abstract:congestion	Only the abstract.
keyword:tls	The keywords assigned by the RFC Editor (`kw:` also works).

Filters

Filters narrow the result set by metadata. They can be used alone (to list RFCs) or together with words.

author:thomson	Author name contains the text; author:"m. thomson" to be precise. See also the author index.
wg:quic	Working group acronym. See the list of working groups.
area:sec key exchange	IETF area: app, art, gen, int, ops, rai, rtg, sec, tsv, wit and a few historic ones.
stream:irtf	Publication stream: `ietf`, `irtf`, `iab`, `independent`, `editorial`, `legacy`.
status:bcp email	Current status: `standard` (any standards-track), `proposed`, `draft`, `std` (Internet Standard), `bcp`, `info`, `exp`, `historic`, `unknown`.
year:2021 quic	Publication year. Ranges: year:2019-2021, year:2024- (since), year:-1985 (until).

Combining

wg:tls year:2018- -draft	TLS working group RFCs since 2018 that do not mention drafts.
author:postel status:std	Internet Standards with Postel as an author.
title:yang status:proposed year:2023-	Recent Proposed Standards with YANG in the title.

On the results page

Status and stream chips narrow the results with one click; the counts show how the matches are distributed.
Hide obsoleted removes RFCs that have been replaced; by default they are shown, marked with what replaced them.
Sort by relevance (default), newest or number. Relevance weighs title matches highest, demotes obsoleted and historic RFCs, and favours RFCs that many other RFCs cite.
Opening a result highlights the search terms in the text, with a match count and next-match arrows.

For tools and scripts

Add &format=json to any search URL for JSON results with facet counts, e.g. /search?q=quic&format=json. Extra parameters: status=proposed-standard, stream=IETF, obsolete=hide, sort=date, p=2.
/rfc9000.json gives one RFC's metadata; /rfc9000.txt the original text. Both allow cross-origin requests.
/llms.txt summarises the whole URL scheme.