Re: Session tracking

On Tue, 18 Apr 1995, Dave Kristol wrote:
> One problem with this proposal is what should proxies do with
> SessionID?  Here's one proposal.  Don't use SessionID as part of the
> cache key.  If a document is in the cache, return it, and reflect back
> to the client any SessionID sent by the client.  If the document is not
> in the cache, pass through any SessionID.

No - if the document is in the cache, there are two options based on whether
there was an "Expires:" header in the HTTP response.  First, if there was no
Expires: header when the object was first fetched, do an If-Modified-Since,
and pass the Session-ID information through in both requests.  If there 
was an Expires: header, no If-Modified-Since request is necessary, and 
don't bother with sending an old Session-ID.  

The logic is, if content providers are labelling their content with 
"Expires:" headers, they are essentially saying "I grant permission to 
redistribute without notification - I'm more interested in lots of people 
seeing this than I am with knowing their viewing habits".  

	Brian

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Received on Tuesday, 18 April 1995 21:20:39 UTC