Re: pipelining vs. deferred content

Jeffrey Mogul wrote:
> 
> Regarding the issue of how one might defer the retrieval of
> an inlined image that will require a long time to generate
> (at the server), Ben Laurie <ben@gonzo.ben.algroup.co.uk> writes:
> 
>     Isn't this problem effectively solved by multiplexing, which is on
>     the agenda for HTTP-NG?
> 
>     I agree that we are unlikely to solve it before DS time! I also
>     shudder to think of how we'd have to restructure Apache to handle
>     it.
> 
>     We are planning changes to Apache to be able to do this kind of
>     thing in V2.0, ETA sometime next century at the current rate of
>     progress.
>     
> Given the time already spent on HTTP/1.1, I would also not
> want to count on deployment of HTTP-NG before the next century :-).
> 
> But this is not really the same as multiplexing, because it's not
> an attempt to reorder requests and responses, or to interleave
> chunks of different messages.  Multiplexing would solve this problem,
> but you don't need anything like the full complexity of multiplexing.

True. And multiplexing was causing my shudders, not your proposed solution.

[snip admirably clear discussion of how to do it without touching the server]

> Unfortunately, if the client doesn't understand "Retry-After",
> then it will simply treat the first 503 response as an unrecoverable
> error, and will never retry the request.  So I don't think this
> exact approach will work in real life, at least not until the
> current population of browsers is replaced.

Also true. How about using a refresh? Or is that pure Netscapism?

Cheers,

Ben.

-- 
Ben Laurie                Phone: +44 (181) 994 6435  Email: ben@algroup.co.uk
Freelance Consultant and  Fax:   +44 (181) 994 6472
Technical Director        URL: http://www.algroup.co.uk/Apache-SSL
A.L. Digital Ltd,         Apache Group member (http://www.apache.org)
London, England.          Apache-SSL author

Received on Thursday, 27 March 1997 15:10:52 UTC