Re: RE-VERSION

>issue: keep-alives in server
> By default, persistent connections are supposed to be used in 1.1.
> When a server receives a downgraded request from a proxy, which
> came from a 1.1 client, should it respond with a connection: close?

The downgraded request is HTTP/1.0 and will not include the keep-alive
connection directive, so the server will not establish a persistent
connection.  Apache 1.2 always sends "Connection: close" on non-persistent
responses, even to normal HTTP/1.0 requests, but I don't think this
should be a requirement (just a good idea).

>Issue: (related) the draft says that connection and response version 
> are hop-by-hop, but it also says that a proxy may act as a 'tunnel'
> at any time. These are contradictory, since proxies may downgrade
> a request, but tunnel the response, which breaks the hop-by-hop 
> nature of response version.

No, they aren't contradictory, because a tunnel is not a proxy.
As soon as the proxy becomes a tunnel, its behavior is no more significant
to HTTP than any TCP/IP router on the net.  In other words, the hop is gone.
Yes, "hop" is a confusing word here, but we ran out of good words for
active HTTP nodes.

The terms "tunnel", "client", "proxy", "server", etc., are all defined
within the specification.

....Roy

Received on Wednesday, 3 September 1997 23:37:23 UTC