Re: issue: what version?

On Tue, 3 Dec 1996, Dave Kristol wrote:

> I don't recall whether the following issue was resolved on the mailing list:

As I recall, it was discussed, but not resolved.

> 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

There are very few clients that do this - probably about the same as
the number of servers that can't understand HTTP/1.1 requests.

> 	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.

IMHO, HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 are close enough in form that it is quite
possible to craft a HTTP/1.1 response that is completely compatible
with HTTP/1.0. Apache 1.2 (a public beta of which was just released)
follows this approach.

-- 
________________________________________________________________________
Alexei Kosut <akosut@nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us>      The Apache HTTP Server
URL: http://www.nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us/~akosut/   http://www.apache.org/