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Re: Server-side roles in the HTTP

From: <kugler@us.ibm.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 15:38:21 -0700
To: http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com
Message-ID: <7qmu8t$5ofa@eGroups.com>
X-Mailing-List: <http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com> archive/latest/551
kugle-@us.ibm.com wrote: 
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/http-wg/?start=8737
> Hi,
> 
> kugler@us.ibm.com wrote:
> 
> > If the full content is immediately available, it would be sent as
one chunk.
> 
> Not necessarily.
> It depends how the CGI is writing to stdout, on the OS, pipe buffer
size, and on the
> load on the machine.
> If a dumb CGI writes one byte at a time to stdout, even in a tight
loop, it's
> possible that the kernel will make the daemon thread wake up and
return it that
> single byte, which would then be sent as a chunk if no buffer
thresholds are set.
> Every other 1-byte write may also result in another chunk. Some
thresholds are
> necessary to avoid those cases.
> 

Well, I just want to caution against optimizing for a pathological case
at the expense (e.g., reduced responsiveness) of normal cases.

Anyway, it's not that important anyway, since we're only talking about
the default behavior.  Mark's draft provides that:
   There MUST be a method by which content generators can specify that
   content is not to be buffered; this MAY be performed by a pseudo-
   HTTP header that is consumed by the server.
So, if I don't want my responses buffered I can turn off buffering (in
theory).

    -Carl
Received on Thursday, 2 September 1999 15:42:45 UTC

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