IETF draft-meow-mrrp-00 is mostly meows — and yes, it’s on the IETF archive

A new Internet‑Draft titled draft‑meow‑mrrp‑00 landed on the IETF archive this week and it reads like a very formal cat. Lines of “Meow” and “MEOW” dominate the document, with an occasional “mrrp” and “nya” peeking through. Is it a protocol proposal? A performance piece? A joke? Hard to say — and that uncertainty is exactly the point. The reaction so far is equal parts bafflement and delight.

What the draft actually is

The draft is submitted in full conformance with BCP 78 and BCP 79 and carries the usual Internet‑Draft boilerplate: it is a working document of the IETF, valid for up to six months, and it will expire on 18 October 2026 unless updated. Copyright and licensing notes — including that code components must include a Revised BSD License text — are present in the text, which underscores that the submission follows formal procedural requirements even as its payload is almost entirely feline onomatopoeia. It has been reported that the document’s title and occasional tokens like “MRRP” suggest an attempt at a mock protocol spec, but that interpretation is unverified.

Reaction and context

It has been reported that the draft drew attention on Hacker News, where commenters alternated between praise for bravado and annoyance at inbox clutter. Allegedly, some readers treated it as an example of internet culture seeping into standards work — think RFC 1149 and RFC 2324-era hijinks — a reminder that the standards community can have a sense of humor. Whether this will ever be taken up as a serious technical proposal is doubtful; Internet‑Drafts can be replaced or obsoleted at any time, and playful submissions like this tend to remain curiosities.

So what now? Probably a chuckle, maybe a thread on social media, and then business as usual: the IETF will keep doing the heavy lifting of networking standards while cats, apparently, will continue to rule the internet. If you’re curious, the draft is available in the IETF archive for a look — assuming you’re ready for a room full of meows.

Sources: ietf.org, Hacker News