- From: Markku Savela <msa@msa.tte.vtt.fi>
- Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 14:11:06 +0300 (EET DST)
- To: www-lib@w3.org
- cc: Howard@telemedicine.clh.ed.ac.uk, msa@msa.tte.vtt.fi
I am wondering what should be done about this. The new wwwlib library sends by default the request as HTTP/1.1, and it seems that existing servers and gateways have been coded rather strictly for 1.0 and requests fail in various ways (see NCSA 1.5.2 or somesuch). Now I run into another, a gateway to some database Trying 129.215.145.132 ... Connected to hyperg.obg.ed.ac.uk. Escape character is '^]'. GET /home;sk=17062E7B HTTP/1.1 HTTP/1.0 400 Wrong Protocol MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html <HEAD><TITLE>Hyper-G W3 Gateway V 2.51: Error</TITLE></HEAD> <BODY> <H1>Bad Request</H1><P> The request was 'GET /home;sk=17062E7B HTTP/1.1 '.</BODY> Connection closed by foreign host. Which is in error? Is the server required to reply with HTTP/1.0, if it doesn't recognize the HTTP/x.x? HTTP/1.0 spec takes great care to specify backwards compatibility, but seems to fail in specifying "forward compatibility". Does it state anywhere what a server should do if the request is for HTTP/x.y, where x.y is higher than servers version? The section 3.1 (HTTP Version) of the HTTP 1.0 only spells out requirements for the servers as HTTP/1.0 servers must: - recognize the format of the Request-Line for HTTP/0.9 and HTTP/1.0 requests; - understand any valid request in the format of HTTP/0.9 or HTTP/1.0; - respond appropriately with a message in the same protocol version used by the client. The last point seems actually wrong, in case of request HTTP/x.y being higher than servers version, the reply should include servers version, not the clients version. Perhaps the correct formatting should have been: - reply with version which ever is the lower from server and client versions. Perhaps HTTP/1.1 and later will get this right. For now it seems that we are stuck with the fact that when client asks HTTP/1.1, some servers refuse to give back anything? -- Markku Savela (msa@hemuli.tte.vtt.fi), Technical Research Centre of Finland Multimedia Systems, P.O.Box 1203,FIN-02044 VTT,http://www.vtt.fi/tte/staff/msa/
Received on Thursday, 15 August 1996 07:24:44 UTC