Re: [hybi] workability (or otherwise) of HTTP upgrade

On Dec 1, 2010, at 1:30 AM, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote:

> On 11/26/2010 6:55 AM, Greg Wilkins wrote:
>> 
>> And do you get similar feeling to think about using the CONNECT method
>> to establish tunnels for arbitrary protocols?
> 
> CONNECT suffers from the same issues you identify is deploying a new port.
> Namely, http servers will reject those requests.  Leveraging CONNECT
> successfully would require additional HTTP-level authentication to identify
> users and prevent abuse (as most proxies do).  Restructuring the internet,
> whether it is adding a new port to unblock, or permitting specific classes
> of CONNECT traffic, would be a similar battle.

Perhaps more to the point, CONNECT is a method that is only allowed to be
sent to a client-side proxy server.  Deliberately sending it in other
HTTP messages would be a violation of its method semantics and the
HTTP/1.1 syntax (because its unusual target syntax is only allowed
when sent to a proxy).

....Roy