HTTP/1.1 Host request-header query

A couple of requests for clarification:

Section 10.22 of the HTTP/1.1 draft (draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-00.*) talks
about the Host request-header.

Am I correct in my interpretation that if the user agent is sending the
request directly to the origin server, then this header is required;
when sending it not to the origin server, it can be omitted (presumably
since the complete URL is given in the Request-URI)?

The document also specifies that Host: header "must not include the
trailing ':port' information which may also be found in the net_loc
portion of a URL".   Surely the Request-URI sent to an origin server will
_not_ include the net_loc portion of the URL?  I assume that the server
can work out the port number in the original URL by doing a getsockname
(or equivalent) on its end of the connection.

Experimentation with Netscape 2.0b3J shows that it is sending a :port on
the end of all its Host request-headers containing the complete net_loc
field of the http URL I entered, although I am well aware not to take
the behaviour of Netscape as the definitive way to do things.

So should I be sending the ':port' or not?

-- 
Stewart Brodie, Electronics & Computer Science, Southampton University.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~snb94r/      http://delenn.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

Received on Thursday, 18 January 1996 13:34:12 UTC