PEP - an Extension Mechanism for HTTP
draft-nielsen-pep-http-00

Abstract

HTTP is used increasingly in applications that need more facilities than the standard version of the protocol provides, ranging from distributed authoring, collaboration, and printing, to various remote procedure call mechanisms. The Protocol Extension Protocol (PEP) is an extension mechanism designed to address the tension between private agreement and public specification and to accommodate extension of applications such as HTTP clients, servers, and proxies. The PEP mechanism is designed to associate each extension with a URI[2], and use a few new RFC 822[1] derived header fields to carry the extension identifier and related information between the parties involved in an extended transaction. This document defines PEP and describes the interactions between PEP and HTTP/1.1[7]. PEP is intended to be compatible with HTTP/1.0[5] inasmuch as HTTP/1.1 is compatible with HTTP/1.0 (see [7], section 19.7). It is proposed that the PEP extension mechanism be included in future versions of HTTP. The PEP extension mechanism may be applicable to other information exchange not mentioned in this document. It is recommended that readers get acquainted with section 1.4 for a suggested reading of this specification and a list of sections specific for HTTP based applications.

Authors

Daniel W. Connolly
Henrik Nielsen
Rohit Khare
Eric Prud'hommeaux

(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)