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Re: issue: what version?

From: Steve Wingard <swingard@spyglass.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 11:59:03 -0600
Message-Id: <3.0b36.32.19961203115902.0096b100@rafiki.spyglass.com>
To: Dave Kristol <dmk@research.bell-labs.com>, masinter@parc.xerox.com, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
X-Mailing-List: <http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com> archive/latest/2017
At 12:05 PM 12/3/96 EST, Dave Kristol wrote:
>I don't recall whether the following issue was resolved on the mailing list:
>
>What protocol version number should an HTTP/1.1-compliant origin server
>send for an HTTP/1.0 request?
>
>There seemed to be two camps:
>1) Send HTTP/1.0 as the response to HTTP/1.0 requests (and HTTP/1.1 as the
>	response to HTTP/1.1 requests).
>
>	Pro:	HTTP/1.0 clients may only understand HTTP/1.0 responses
>	Con:	a client would never be able to determine whether a server
>		understands HTTP/1.1
>
>2) Send HTTP/1.1 responses always.
>
>	Pro:	the server advertises its capability
>	Con:    because the response (headers) must be HTTP/1.0
>		compatible, the server is "lying" about the kind of
>		response and may mislead or confuse the client.
>
>My preference is (1).
>Dave Kristol
>

We've been working with implementation #2 (taking care not to use
any 1.1 mechanisms that would cause problems to a 1.0 client when
the request indicates HTTP/1.0), and have not encountered any 
interoperability issues yet.  I've noticed that www.apache.org is running
a preliminary version of Apache v1.2 that returns HTTP/1.1 in its
responses -- Robert, have you folks gotten any complaints from 
any users?

Has anybody else done any "experimentation"?  

--
Steve Wingard					swingard@spyglass.com
Spyglass, Inc.
Received on Tuesday, 3 December 1996 10:20:42 UTC

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