WGLC p1: Tear-down

Section 6.6 of p1 states:

   A server that sends a close connection option MUST initiate a
   lingering close of the connection after it sends the response
   containing close.  The server MUST NOT process any further requests
   received on that connection.

   A client that receives a close connection option MUST cease sending
   requests on that connection and close the connection after reading
   the response message containing the close; if additional pipelined
   requests had been sent on the connection, the client SHOULD assume
   that they will not be processed by the server.

The last sentence can be interpreted one of two ways:
1) The client SHOULD assume the additional pipelined requests will NOT be processed by the server and therefore can happily re-try them knowing the server has not processed the previous ones.

2) The client SHOULD NOT assume the additional pipelined requests will be processed (which implies the client simply can not know whether the server has processed them or not).

As the client has no way of knowing whether the server may have processed them or not (e.g. the client may be talking to a proxy that has already relayed the pipelined requests to the origin and done so before the proxy was aware that it wanted to close the connection on this response) I would suggest rewording the last sentence quoted above:

OLD:
   the client SHOULD assume that they will not be processed by the server.
NEW:
   the client SHOULD NOT assume that they will be processed by the server.


Thanks
Ben

Received on Monday, 29 April 2013 19:34:03 UTC