Re: Proxies and loops

> Suppose however, that in the meantime  F crashes, bringing down links 5 
> and 7.  When the query arrives at G, the routing tables will have changed 
> to make the correct next hop A again (A will have updated its tables to 
> route queries to E via B).
> 
> With a Forwarded header, A would be forced to discard the message, even 
> though a path exists between A and E. 

In this case, A should recognize that there is a loop (which is exactly
what this scenario describes), cancel the original request, and re-route
it to the new destination.  There is no better way to handle such a request.

 ...Roy T. Fielding
    Department of Information & Computer Science    (fielding@ics.uci.edu)
    University of California, Irvine, CA 92717-3425    fax:+1(714)824-4056
    http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/