Re: Decision about Host?

M. Hedlund writes: 
> At 3:09 PM 10/5/95, Jeffrey Mogul wrote:
> >But then what does it
> >mean if a client sends:
> >
> >        Host: www
> >
> >To me, this is an error, and the server can report it as such.
> >What else could it possibly do?
> 
> Since the server will presumably still receive HTTP/1.0 requests without
> Host headers, it will need to have a default document root to use in
> response to these requests.  So it could:
> 
>         1. use a document tree relating to Host if Host exists; and
>         2. use a default document tree if Host is not given or is ambiguous.
> 
> Sending a Bad Request error because Host is ambiguous seems too strict.
> Probably neither the user nor the server maintainer will be able to do
> anything about the ambiguity.  If server implementations were inconsistent
> about returning this error, the result would be confusion and great
> calamity.  Or the like.
Sending 300 will let the user to choose. (And only the user knows, what
he/she meant.)
Server implementors may compete in better choosing of the default choice.
Andrew.