RE: Host header issue

You know, I'm still not sure under which situation you
would 

a) not require a Host: header to be sent by a client;
   (since there are HTTP/1.1 servers that would error
   if the Host header were omitted)

b) not require that a server respond with an error if the Host
  header were missing (since HTTP/1.1 clients should only
  send absolute URIs to proxies.)

Procedurally, since HTTP/1.1 is Draft Standard, the only way
I can think to institute a change such as this would be to write
a separate document, as Proposed Standard, which updates 2616;
I'd suggest:

   Omitting Host Header from HTTP/1.1 Requests with Full URI

as a title.

Note that:

   1. If Request-URI is an absoluteURI, the host is part of the
     Request-URI. Any Host header field value in the request MUST be
     ignored.

so a valid request would be

GET http://host.dom/path HTTP/1.1
Host: 

and you're saving 7 bytes for the "CRLFHost:" But then, if you're so
concerned about saving 6 bytes, why not also work on encoding the 20 bytes
that comprise "GET http://" and "HTTP/1.1" into something more efficient?

Larry
-- 
http://www.parc.xerox.com/masinter