Greasing HTTP
draft-nottingham-http-grease-01
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Mark Nottingham
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2020-10-07
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Network Working Group M. Nottingham
Internet-Draft October 8, 2020
Intended status: Best Current Practice
Expires: April 11, 2021
Greasing HTTP
draft-nottingham-http-grease-01
Abstract
Like many network protocols, HTTP is vulnerable to ossification of
its extensibility points. This draft explains why HTTP ossification
is a problem and establishes guidelines for exercising those
extensions by 'greasing' the protocol to combat it.
Note to Readers
_RFC EDITOR: please remove this section before publication_
The issues list for this draft can be found at
https://github.com/mnot/I-D/labels/http-grease [1].
The most recent (often, unpublished) draft is at
https://mnot.github.io/I-D/http-grease/ [2].
Recent changes are listed at https://github.com/mnot/I-D/commits/gh-
pages/http-grease [3].
See also the draft's current status in the IETF datatracker, at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-http-grease/ [4].
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on April 11, 2021.
Nottingham Expires April 11, 2021 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Greasing HTTP October 2020
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Ossification and HTTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Greasing HTTP Request Header Fields . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.3. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
Like many network protocols, HTTP is vulnerable to ossification of
its extensibility points. Ossification happens when a significant
number of the systems that generate, transmit, handle, or consume the
protocol don't accept a new extension, thereby making it more
difficult to deploy extensions.
For example, TCP has effectively been ossified by middleboxes that
assume that new TCP options will not be deployed; likewise, the
Protocol field in IP has been effectively ossified as well, since so
many networks will only accept TCP or UDP traffic.
Addressing this issue is important; protocol extensibility allows
adaptation to new circumstances as well as application to new use
cases. Inability to deploy new extensions creates pressure to misuse
the protocol - often leading to undesirable side effects - or to use
other protocols, reducing the value that the community gets from a
shared, standard protocol.
Nottingham Expires April 11, 2021 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Greasing HTTP October 2020
While there are a few ways that protocol designers can mitigate
ossification, this document focuses on a technique that's well suited
to many of the ossification risks in HTTP: 'greasing' extensibility
points by exercising them, so that they don't become 'rusted shut.'
[RFC8701]) pioneered greasing techniques in IETF protocols; this
document explains how they apply to HTTP. It focuses on generic HTTP
features; other documents cover versioned extensibility points (e.g.,
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