How this becomes an RFC

Where it stands

• Internet-Draft -00 written done

  Full text, formula, reference implementation, nftables config, and test vectors.

• Reference implementations done

  Interoperable Python and Go: the formula, a real NFQUEUE-based MITM for each, and a demo server/client pair exercising Sections 7 and 8 — cross-checked against Appendix C and against each other. See the repository.

• Format conversion done

  Converted to RFCXML v3 and validated against the real xml2rfc toolchain — structurally clean, with live references resolved from the IETF's own bibliography. draft-traviss-evil-byte-00.xml.

• Public read-through in progress

  This site. A joke RFC that nobody has read is just a Markdown file with delusions.

• Submit via the IETF Datatracker

  Filed at datatracker.ietf.org/submit as an individual submission. The authors get an email verification request; once confirmed, it's posted and citable as draft-traviss-evil-byte-00.

• Independent stream or AD sponsorship

  Nothing here belongs to a Working Group, so the two real paths to an RFC number are the Independent Submission Stream (reviewed by the ISE) or a sitting Area Director willing to sponsor it into the IETF stream. April 1 RFCs have gone both ways.

• RFC Editor queue & April 1 timing

  The RFC Editor accepts April 1 submissions from anyone, and considers them for that year's batch if they arrive properly formatted at least two weeks before the date. Everything else about the queue — AUTH48, cross-review — applies as normal.

• Publication

  Targeted for 1 April 2027 — the date already sitting in the draft's own header. RFC 3514 gets obsoleted, on schedule, twenty-four years after it was filed.

How to help

In rough order of usefulness.

Further reading

• datatracker.ietf.org/submit — the actual Internet-Draft submission tool.
• authors.ietf.org — Submitting your Internet-Draft — the current, canonical author's guide.
• RFC 3514 — the evil bit, which this document proposes to obsolete.
• April Fools' Day Request for Comments — Wikipedia — background on the tradition and its rules.