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

On Wed, 26 Mar 1997, 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.

The server generally won't know when the client is finished. The client
may obtain some resources from caches, for example.  Futhermore, for the
server to know it would have to parse the content. A to be heavily
discouraged requirement. The client knows when it has the full page worth
of stuff.

Dave Morris

Received on Wednesday, 26 March 1997 13:13:21 UTC