Re: HTTP Connection Management (draft-ietf-http-connection-00.txt)

Jeff de la Beaujardiere wrote:
> 
> 
> Jim Gettys writes in draft-ietf-http-connection-00.txt:
> >   This discussion also shows that a client should close idle
> >   connections before the server does. Currently in the HTTP standard
> >   there is no way for a server to provide such a "hint" to the client,
> >   and there should be a mechanism. This memo solicits other opinions on
> >   this topic.
> 
> Because resources on the web are typically document-like units comprising
> HTML and several inline entities like images and scripts, it would seem
> useful for the server to send a close-connection hint to the client when the
> server has transmitted, and received ACKs for, all of the content in the
> current "page."  Presumably the user will spend enough time perusing the
> document that the benefits of maintaining the connection will have
> diminished to the point of negligibility.  Of course, the client may
> (indeed, should) delay acting on the hint for 10-60 sec in case the user
> immediately follows an anchor to another document on the server.
> 
> A server providing web resources of potentially infinite length (like
> streaming or pushed content) cannot use the same heuristic to determine when
> to send a close-connection hint, but the same format for the hint could be
> used regardless of the means by which the server decides it's time for the
> client to take a hint.
> 
> When multiple entities are sent, each is preceded by a server response code
> like "HTTP/1.1 200 OK."  Perhaps a final hint entity with a status reponse
> like "HTTP/1.1 207 Complete Content" could be sent.  The entity body could
> be empty, but it would be useful to include therein related information such
> as how long the server plans to keep the connection idle before closing it.

Eh? The server doesn't know when the content is complete - but the client does.
This suggestion would seem, therefore, to be both pointless and impractical.

Cheers,

Ben.

-- 
Ben Laurie                Phone: +44 (181) 994 6435  Email: ben@algroup.co.uk
Freelance Consultant and  Fax:   +44 (181) 994 6472
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A.L. Digital Ltd,         Apache Group member (http://www.apache.org)
London, England.          Apache-SSL author

Received on Wednesday, 26 March 1997 07:21:23 UTC