- From: Ben Laurie <ben@gonzo.ben.algroup.co.uk>
- Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 15:16:58 +0000 (GMT)
- To: delabeau@iniki.gsfc.nasa.gov
- Cc: jg@zorch.w3.org, http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com
Jeff de la Beaujardiere wrote: > > > Jim Gettys writes in draft-ietf-http-connection-00.txt: > > This discussion also shows that a client should close idle > > connections before the server does. Currently in the HTTP standard > > there is no way for a server to provide such a "hint" to the client, > > and there should be a mechanism. This memo solicits other opinions on > > this topic. > > Because resources on the web are typically document-like units comprising > HTML and several inline entities like images and scripts, it would seem > useful for the server to send a close-connection hint to the client when the > server has transmitted, and received ACKs for, all of the content in the > current "page." Presumably the user will spend enough time perusing the > document that the benefits of maintaining the connection will have > diminished to the point of negligibility. Of course, the client may > (indeed, should) delay acting on the hint for 10-60 sec in case the user > immediately follows an anchor to another document on the server. > > A server providing web resources of potentially infinite length (like > streaming or pushed content) cannot use the same heuristic to determine when > to send a close-connection hint, but the same format for the hint could be > used regardless of the means by which the server decides it's time for the > client to take a hint. > > When multiple entities are sent, each is preceded by a server response code > like "HTTP/1.1 200 OK." Perhaps a final hint entity with a status reponse > like "HTTP/1.1 207 Complete Content" could be sent. The entity body could > be empty, but it would be useful to include therein related information such > as how long the server plans to keep the connection idle before closing it. Eh? The server doesn't know when the content is complete - but the client does. This suggestion would seem, therefore, to be both pointless and impractical. Cheers, Ben. -- Ben Laurie Phone: +44 (181) 994 6435 Email: ben@algroup.co.uk Freelance Consultant and Fax: +44 (181) 994 6472 Technical Director URL: http://www.algroup.co.uk/Apache-SSL A.L. Digital Ltd, Apache Group member (http://www.apache.org) London, England. Apache-SSL author
Received on Wednesday, 26 March 1997 07:21:23 UTC