Host header

• From: Michael Shapiro <mshapiro@ncsa.uiuc.edu>
• Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 06:42:26 -0500 (CDT)
• To: http-wg <http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
• Message-Id: <9510021142.AA14725@void.ncsa.uiuc.edu>

It seems that requiring a Host header for http/1.1 will make the http
protocol unuseable for URI's that do not have host information (eg
URNs).

For URN schemes there may not be host information as part of the URN.
This is true of the path URN scheme.  The client may use a proxy to resolve
the URN.  And this proxy may speak http/1.1. Requiring a Host header
would make it impossible to use the proxy.

It would be better to add some sort of server capability negotiation.
The client could ask if the server can handle full URLs and then based
on the answer either send the full URI or not.

Received on Monday, 2 October 1995 04:47:55 UTC