Re: #179: Relax Via MUST

In the back of my head, I've actually been thinking it would be useful  
to note that Via is necessary for operation of some protocol features,  
which is why there's the option for a minimal Via header, e.g. "1.1  
foo".

I say this because I suspect that many implementers just don't realise  
that it has these uses. Of course, you're not going to dissuade the  
more paranoid folks from stripping anything that looks like  
intermediation, but oh well.

Cheers,


On 17/07/2009, at 4:40 PM, Adrien de Croy wrote:

>
> I think it might have been me that raised this issue a while back
>
> I agree it needs to be closed with no action.
>
> Taking it out breaks too much stuff.
>
> The original query related to customers who have unreasonable ISPs  
> who don't want customers to run proxies to get more use out of their  
> link, these customers didn't want there to be anything in their HTTP  
> requests that would give away the existence of a proxy.
>
> I think this case is probably best handled with an option (default  
> off) to make the proxy "stealthy", which strictly speaking makes it  
> broken (no outbound Via).  Inbound Via is another matter and doesn't  
> have any privacy issues.
>
> It's probably even less of an issue now with the prevalence of  
> proxies for other purposes, even running on the local machine (e.g.  
> some filtering / AV software installs a proxy for localhost).
>
> Thanks
>
> Adrien
>
>
> Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>> On Jul 16, 2009, at 5:13 PM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
>>
>>> I'm fine closing this with no action; IIRC the previous discussion  
>>> was leaning towards removing the requirement.
>>>
>>> Others?
>>
>> There is no way we can remove the requirement without removing
>> half a dozen other features.  Intermediaries that don't send
>> Via are broken and will continue to be broken even if the
>> requirement doesn't exist.
>>
>> ....Roy
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> Adrien de Croy - WinGate Proxy Server - http://www.wingate.com
>


--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/

Received on Friday, 17 July 2009 06:50:10 UTC