Re: Persistent and Keep-Alive in HTTP/1.1

John Franks <john@math.nwu.edu> wrote:
  > I still don't understand the point of having both Connection:
  > Persistent and Connection: Keep-Alive (not to mention "Connection:
  > keep-alive, persistent").  Having carefully read section E.2.5 and
  > E.2.5.1 I understand that the chunked encoding may be used with
  > persistent but not with keep-alive.  This seems to be the only
  > difference.
Actually, despite what the spec. says, I would assume you can used
chunked if the client says HTTP/1.1, whether "keep-alive" or
"persist".
  > 
  > Since persistent connections are one hop phenomena and every
  > client/server/proxy knows whether its immediate neighbor is talking
  > 1.0 or 1.1, why couldn't we always use use "keep-alive" to indicate a
  > persistent connection.  It seems like both ends of a transaction will
  > know if the chunked encoding is allowed since they know whether they
  > are speaking 1.1 or later.  Chunked is required for 1.1 and not
  > available for 1.0.  It seems redundant and obscure to code an "it's ok
  > to use chunked" message in the Connection header since isn't needed
  > anyway.
  > 
  > Is there something I am missing here?

If so, I'm missing it, too.  I just spent 1/2 hour or so trying to
write up a message explaining why we need Persist, only to reach John's
conclusion.  Either Persist is unnecessary, or the spec. needs a better
explanation/justification.

Dave Kristol

Received on Thursday, 2 May 1996 07:16:37 UTC