- From: Dave Kristol <dmk@bell-labs.com>
- Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 17:52:45 -0500
- To: Jeffrey Mogul <mogul@pa.dec.com>
- Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
Jeffrey Mogul wrote: > > Dave Morris writes > > one of the 'justifications' for byte ranges was the ability to > continue retrieving a previously interrupted response. In that > mode, if I were the developer of the client, I would want the byte > range to apply to the compressed form. > > If one starts with three assumptions (which might even be "facts"): > > (1) The interruption affects the tail of a retrieval. > > (2) Most HTTP retrievals are attempting to transfer the whole resource > value > > (3) The compression algorithms that we actually use are one-pass > algorithms with finite windows, and so it is possible to extract > a large portion of the uncompressed form from a partial copy > of the compressed form. > [...] Jeff, I think what you're missing is that most servers store files (er, entities?) already compressed as, for example, .gzip files. Can anyone offer an example of a server that compresses content on the fly and returns it in that form? Dave Kristol
Received on Friday, 14 November 1997 14:56:22 UTC