Adding Age

Roy T. Fielding:
>
  [Daniel DuBois:]
>> I consider the issue of whether or not to add an Age: header (with any
>> value) to a response that was NOT served from cache to be a different issue
>> entirely, and feel more strongly that a proxy should not add an Age: to a
>> fresh response.
>
>Just to clarify, that is the only objection I have related to the age
>calculation.

OK, let me try to sum up where we stand.

In the 1.1 draft, a cache is defined as:

| cache
|   A program's local store of response messages and the subsystem that
|   controls its message storage, retrieval, and deletion. [...]
|   Any client or server may include a cache, [...]

Section 14.6 of the 1.1 draft spec says:

|   HTTP/1.1 caches MUST send an Age header in every response.

This is a bit ambiguous, it can mean

a) HTTP/1.1 proxy caches MUST send an Age header in every response.

or

b) HTTP/1.1 caches MUST include an Age header in every response which
   is retrieved.

Seen from the proxy, b) means that

    HTTP/1.1 proxies MUST send an Age header in every response which
    was retrieved from the cache subsystem.

Many people (Daniel, Roy, Me) would like to see the spec clarified to
use the b) version.  

I propose to add
  
   `clarification on when to send an Age header'

as a topic for the 1.1 discussion at the IETF.

>......Roy

Koen.

Received on Friday, 29 November 1996 04:23:07 UTC