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Know Yer RFCs - RFC 865, Quote of the Day Protocol (STD 23)

This is one of the protocols that I’m kind of surprised isn’t in more use, by virtue of its simplicity in implementation. RFC 865 is a layer 7 debugging RFC where a socket listens for a TCP or UDP connection, and then sends a short, arbitrary message.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require "socket"

QOTD_PORT = 17 # Change to higher number port to run as normal user
server = TCPServer.new QOTD_PORT

loop do
  client = server.accept
  client.puts "Hello world!"
  client.close
end

RFC 865 recommends the character set be limited to ASCII (RFC 20/STD 80), and that you keep the character limit to 512 characters. There’s a lot of things you could do with 512 characters, so just for fun I’ve come up with a list of creative things you can do in that amount of space.

  • A daily blog
  • Sudoku puzzles
  • ASCII art
  • Box scores of today’s baseball game
  • Chess puzzles
  • Pipe output from the fortune program
  • Weather forecasts
  • Serial fiction
  • AND SO MUCH MORE