RE: Nit in section 2.1.1 of httpbis-p1

David Morris wrote:
> > On 27/03/2009, at 3:48 AM, Barry Leiba wrote:
> >> As I said on the mic in SF:
> >> Section 2.1.1 of part 1 is a bit too waffly about IP addresses, and
> >> what it wants to say is already covered in the meaning of SHOULD
> >> anyway.  So:
> >>
> >> OLD
> >> The use of IP addresses in URLs SHOULD be avoided whenever possible
> >> (see [RFC1900]).
> >>
> >> NEW
> >> IP addresses SHOULD NOT be used in URLs (see [RFC1900]).

> Considering the use of IP addresses by legitimate web sites I observe
> on a daily basis, the OLD wording really is more relaxed and
> consistent with real world practice than the proposed replacement.
> I suspect that it is related to some form of load balancing and
> sticking to the assigned server. Or it might have to do with use
> of a facility such as Amazon Web Services where making IPs persist
> across restarts costs money and is more difficult than simply
> using the known current assigned public IP in the redirect or base
> tag for subsequent pages. I prefer the OLD form.

Let's just remove the advice completely. It doesn't add any value and if it
did it would belong in (an update of) RFC 3986, not in HTTP. There is
nothing HTTP-specific about the badness of IP addresses in URIs.

- Brian

Received on Wednesday, 8 April 2009 14:09:09 UTC