W3C home > Mailing lists > Public > ietf-http-wg@w3.org > October to December 1996

Re: Server response version number

From: Tom Tromey <tromey@creche.cygnus.com>
Date: 21 Oct 1996 10:06:45 -0600
To: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
Cc: frystyk@w3.org, jcma@ai.mit.edu, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com, w3c-http@w3.org
Message-Id: <m1n2xg47ze.fsf@creche.cygnus.com>
X-Mailing-List: <http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com> archive/latest/1850
Larry> On a related issue, I'm concerned about the possibility that a
Larry> single server might 'downgrade' depending on the URL rather
Larry> than the version of the requestor: I think there are clients
Larry> that presume the version of subsequent responses based on the
Larry> version of previous responses.

I believe such servers are implicitly allowed by the definition of
"server":

  Likewise, any server may act as an origin server, proxy, gateway, or
  tunnel, switching behavior based on the nature of each request.

Imagine a proxy server that switches to tunneling behavior when
proxying for a 1.0 server, but is 1.1 otherwise.

However, the draft says this:

  Clients SHOULD remember the version number of at least the most
  recently used server

I don't think the version number of the server is actually knowable;
instead all a client can discover is the version number the server
used on the most recent request.

Tom
-- 
tromey@cygnus.com                 Member, League for Programming Freedom
Received on Monday, 21 October 1996 15:14:50 UTC

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thursday, 2 February 2023 18:43:00 UTC