Re: Connection: close and 100-continue

On Thursday Nov 8, 2001, Roy T. Fielding wrote:

> > Should a Connection: close header be allowed on a
> > 100-continue response?  If so what does it mean?  Does it
> 
> Does it matter?  Does there exist a realistic situation in
> which a server would send Connection: close and require a
> consistent, interoperable behavior on the part of the
> client?
> 
> No?  Then it doesn't need to be specified.

I came at it from another spot.  While trying to work around
an IE bug:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q305/2/17.ASP

we found our server implementation could do better at
sending "Connection: close" when it knew it was going to
close the connection and not just relying on clients to cope
well with dropped connections.  In trying to get it right, we
weren't sure if we should send it on 100-continue responses.
Someone here read:

   HTTP/1.1 applications that do not support persistent
   connections MUST include the "close" connection option in
   every message.

and thought we needed to send it (a 100-continue response is
a message so we MUST include it).  It didn't make sense to
me, thought it could break things, and wanted to check what
was right.

We won't send close on 100-continue responses.

Howard

Received on Friday, 9 November 2001 00:13:04 UTC