The Quote of the Day (QOTD) service is a member of the

Internet protocol suite The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

, defined in 1983 in RFC 865 by

Jon Postel Jonathan Bruce Postel (; August 6, 1943 – October 16, 1998) was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to Internet Standard, standards. He is known p ...

. As indicated there, the QOTD concept predated the specification, when QOTD was used by mainframe sysadmins to broadcast a daily quote on request by a user. It was then formally codified both for prior purposes as well as for testing and measurement purposes. A host may connect to a server that supports the QOTD protocol, on either TCP or UDP port 17. To keep the quotes at a reasonable length, RFC 865 specifies a maximum of 512 octets for the quote. Although some sources indicate that the QOTD service is rarely enabled, and is in any case often firewalled to avoid denial-of-service attacks, interest continues in the pre-existing purpose of serving quotes as can be seen with web engine searches. Current testing and measurement of

IP network The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

s is more commonly done with ping and traceroute, which are more robust adaptations of the echo protocol (RFC 862), which predated the attempt at QOTD standardization.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Qotd Internet protocols Application layer protocols