Re: Negotiating compression

Martin,

On May 27, 2014, at 1:54 PM, Martin Thomson <martin.thomson@gmail.com> wrote:
> The long and rambling thread on schedule has again started to discuss
> HPACK.  A point was made regarding negotiation for its use.
> 
> I don't think that negotiation is necessary.  The argument regarding
> the physics, which would dictate the use of an entire RTT for
> negotiation, is compelling, but I have others.  The only reason you
> want negotiation is if you want to be able to influence the behaviour
> of a counterparty.
> 
> A sizable advantage can be gained by modifying your own behaviour,
> which HPACK always permits.  Given that the data you care most about
> protecting is usually the stuff that you send, I'm willing to bet that
> this is good enough in the unlikely event that an attack is
> discovered.

A parameter in the initial settings frame would be enough - we already have one for controlling the size of the header table.

All that would seem to be missing is a parameter to disable Huffman coding (issue #485) to enable simpler implementations that use the literal representations for headers (with names and/or the static table indices).

_________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair