- From: Roger Gonzalez <rg@server.net>
- Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 17:15:07 -0500
- To: mogul@pa.dec.com
- Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
>>>>> Jeffrey Mogul writes: Jeff> If the server doesn't want to receive the large body, it Jeff> immediately replies with its 4xx or 5xx response, and Jeff> immediately closes (not resets) the connection. Jeff> If the client manages to read the 4xx or 5xx response, it must Jeff> honor it and should reflect it to the user. I really don't like the "If". 401 (not to mention 3xx) -require- the client to read the response, because they aren't fatal, and they contain critical information to making the transaction succeed! If there is any doubt that the client might not read the response, then we are doing something wrong. The protocol should be deterministic in any case where the physical connection hasn't been screwed up. I'm all for fault tolerance and fallback mechanisms, but they should not be the "standard" way of moving data around. Anyway, everyone keeps talking about the 4xx and 5xx -fatal- cases. These are the easy ones. In any scenario, please think in terms of a harder case, such as the client wants to PUT a giant chunk of data to a location that requires authentication, or tries to POST to a resource that has moved, etc. -Roger Roger Gonzalez NetCentric Corporation rg@server.net 56 Rogers Street home (617) 646-0028 Cambridge, MA 02142 mobile (617) 755-0635 work (617) 868-8600 60 09 3A EE FE 6A 1E CC -pgp- B7 F7 6B 0F 00 1D 01 C7
Received on Thursday, 7 December 1995 14:21:14 UTC