Re: RE-VERSION

On Mon, 11 Aug 1997, Foteos Macrides wrote:
> Klaus Weide <kweide@tezcat.com> wrote:
[ about the "OPTIONS probe" for non-compliant 1.0 proxies: ] 
> >
> >It need not be a 200 status - any "HTTP/1.N" response with N>0 would
> >be sufficient to detect that a next-hop server is not one of those proxies.
> >
> >My understanding is that no HTTP/1.1 server is required to implement
> >any specific method.  (So it could still be compliant if it responded
> >to all methods with "HTTP/1.1 405 Method not allowed" or "HTTP/1.1 501
> >Not Implemented".  Of course that's not very useful.)
[ big snip ]
> 
> 	As far as getting back 405 or 501 because that's possible based
> on What is Written, I thought we were in LAST_CALL for moving HTTP/1.1
> from Proposed Standard to Draft Standard, hoping to catch any potentially
> serious implementation problems, and interpretation of the Word is not my
> forte. :) :)

It would actually be reasonable behavior for a proxy-only server,
i.e. a server which is not also configure to act as an origin server,
to respond with an error status to all requests which don't use the
absoluteURI form for Request-URI.  And the non-absoluteURI form is
required for the OPTIONS probe, to make sure it is really the next-hop
proxy who answers.

This leads to another question.  Does the proposed OPTIONS probe
actually *work* for an Apache/1.[23]* server acting as proxy?  As Roy
has revealed Apache-as-proxy is one of the cases where HTTP/1.1
response status is improperly forwarded.  I suspect (but cannot test)
that the same server would respond as HTTP/1.1 when checked with
OPTIONS, making the probe worthless.


   Klaus

Received on Monday, 11 August 1997 13:47:56 UTC