Section 14.36 Range, and PUTs

Section 14.36 says that support for Range is optional. For clients I
agree, but I think that for servers there's a problem with Range and
PUT. If a client sends a PUT with a Range:, and the server doesn't
support Range:, then the whole entity will be clobbered.

It would be better if 1.1 servers had to at least recognize Range and
produce an error message on methods other than GET if they don't support
the Range retrieval semantics. (This includes unrecognized range-units
-- see my previous message).

Proposal:

Change

(However, not all clients and servers need to support byte-range
operations.)

to

Clients MAY support byte-range operations. Servers MAY ignore Range
headers on GET requests, and on all other methods MUST either support
byte-range operations or return a 501 (Not Implemented) error if the
request contains a Range header or a range-unit that the server does not
recognize.
----------------------------------------------------
Paul J. Leach            Email: paulle@microsoft.com
Microsoft                Phone: 1-206-882-8080
1 Microsoft Way          Fax:   1-206-936-7329
Redmond, WA 98052

Received on Friday, 31 May 1996 16:13:41 UTC