Re: HTTP response version, again

David W. Morris wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Dec 1996 S.N.Brodie@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote:
> > I read the message that the AOL proxy has been issuing that blames the
> > remote site for the failure (in Apache Week).  It would seem that their
> > proxy does not implement HTTP/1.0 correctly if it does not accept a
> > response in the same major version (which is all servers have to provide)
> 
> Perhaps they don't implement the non-standard HTTP/1.0 RFC 'correctly'
> which may not have even existed when they implemented...

This is not the case. AOL implemented this change in the last few weeks, in
response, they say, to "broken" servers issuing HTTP/1.1 responses. It seems
unfortunate to me that they elected to do this without discussion, either with
the authors of the "broken" servers, or with HTTP-WG.

It also seems to me that the spec is not clear on this issue. There is clear
intent in HTTP/1.1, in that the word "major" was added to the version of
the response, but, AFAICS, no clear requirement to respond either 1.0 or 1.1 to
a 1.0 request. Since a requirement of the spec is to be liberal in what is
accepted, it seems to me that the correct interpretation of the spec is that
a 1.1 reponse to a 1.0 request is permitted.

I forget where we are wrt modifications to the spec. It seems to me that a
modification should be made to clarify this point, whichever way it goes.

Cheers,

Ben.

-- 
Ben Laurie                Phone: +44 (181) 994 6435  Email: ben@algroup.co.uk
Freelance Consultant and  Fax:   +44 (181) 994 6472
Technical Director        URL: http://www.algroup.co.uk/Apache-SSL
A.L. Digital Ltd,         Apache Group member (http://www.apache.org)
London, England.          Apache-SSL author

Received on Saturday, 21 December 1996 13:34:11 UTC