Re: Claification requested in Host:

>Here is a HTTP 1.1 question for you.  According to the spec 14.23, the
>Host field is defined as
>	"Host" ":" host [ ":" port ]
>where (in 3.2.2), host is defined as
>	<a legal Internet host domain name or IP address...>
>
>The question is whether a single component name consititute a "legal"
>Internet host domain name?  For example, a user types in "foo" at his
>browser, which runs in domain "xyz.com".  The browser is smart enough
>to assume the use wants to talk to "foo.xyz.com", and hence gets the
>correct IP address.  But in the HTTP request, the browser sends
>	Host : foo
>Does this browser conform to HTTP 1.1?

Yes.

>If the answer is yes, there may be a problem with HTTP 1.1, since the
>ambiguous host name is not sufficient for virtual host implementation.

That assumes it is ambiguous, in which case it should not be used within
a URL, in which case it would not appear in Host.  The server can
easily avoid ambiguity by not creating ambiguity (i.e., by not providing
references which are ambiguous).  There is no need for the protocol to
require that all references be unambiguous, but it might be nice to say
that ambiguous references will have ambiguous results, and that non-FQDNs
may be ambiguous depending on the context of their use.

.....Roy

Received on Friday, 14 February 1997 20:20:58 UTC