Re: [squid-users] Persistent Connections

On 2006/09/20, at 2:14 PM, Henrik Nordstrom wrote:

> But it's true that we probably could assume a HTTP/1.1 message is
> persistent unless it has a connection: close tag as the close tag is
> required by HTTP/1.1. But at the same time RFC 2616 8.1.2.1 says:
>
> Clients and servers SHOULD NOT assume that a persistent
> connection is
> maintained for HTTP versions less than 1.1 unless it is explicitly
> signaled. See section 19.6.2 for more information on backward
> compatibility with HTTP/1.0 clients.

... and one could argue that it's explicitly signalled by the Content-
Length header in the response.

> 8.1.3 says
>
> A proxy server MUST NOT establish a HTTP/1.1 persistent connection
> with an HTTP/1.0 client (but see RFC 2068 [33] for information and
> discussion of the problems with the Keep-Alive header
> implemented by
> many HTTP/1.0 clients).

I'm actually more interested in this in the gateway case, but point
taken.

>> However, since this is a spec interpretation issue, I might take it
>> up with the folks over at HTTP-WG.
>
> You are welcome.
>
> But I don't really see much value to stir up discussions around
> HTTP/1.0
> persistent connections, they work the ways they do and can not be
> changed, only documented (was a dead end).

If you haven't seen Roy's... colourful response on HTTP-WG along
these lines, I'll forward. :)

> The most significant blank spot is how HTTP/1.0 proxies knowing about
> persistent connections should react to HTTP/1.1 clients not explicitly
> signaling persistent connections. Here we choose take the safe path
> and
> assumes the client doesn't know about HTTP/1.0 persistent connections
> and close the connection.
>
> Unfortunately I have no idea where to find that Netscape document
> today
> after all their restructuring. Maybe in the Internet Archive?

I'll look for it.

Just thinking aloud -- the obvious solution to this is to make Squid
HTTP/1.1. Of course, that's a lot of work, but I wonder if it would
be more manageable by going 1.1 on just the client side at first,
while remaining 1.0 on the server side, to avoid chunked responses.

Yes, I realise that's pretty sick.

Cheers,

--
Mark Nottingham
mnot@yahoo-inc.com