If-Modified-Since No Longer Cool?

I've been noticing with increasing frequency that the commercial servers
don't appear to be honoring If-Modified-Since in GET requests, and I'm a bit
baffled as to why. I've checked this against Netscape 2.0, Oracle's
InfoServer (right name?), and WebSite 1.1.1c, and experimented using telnet
to port 80 and comparing HEAD replies with GET reply results.

Either I'm both typing very badly and our existing programs are typing wrong
too, or it would seem to me that with all the concern over network and web
server performance this would be a slam dunk to support or continue
supporting. It's even more curious to me that the server is obtaining the
information for a HEAD reply but doesn't seem to make any use of it for a
GET request.

Are there good reasons I just can't think of for not supporting
If-modified-since in the request? Did I take a nap and miss a format change?

GET / HTTP/1.0
If-Modified-Since: Monday, 07-Oct-96 16:00:00 GMT


        John

---------------------------------------------------------------
John James                    Email:  jjames@firstfloor.COM
First Floor, Inc.             Web:    http://www.firstfloor.COM
444 Castro Street, Suite 200  Tel:    (415) 254-5101
Mountain View. CA 94041       Fax:    (415) 968-1193

Received on Monday, 7 October 1996 15:00:20 UTC