HTTP Cache-Control Extensions for Stale Content
draft-nottingham-http-stale-controls-00

Network Working Group                                      M. Nottingham
Internet-Draft                                               Yahoo! Inc.
Intended status: Informational                         November 29, 2008
Expires: June 2, 2009

            HTTP Cache-Control Extensions for Stale Content
                draft-nottingham-http-stale-controls-00

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Abstract

   This document defines two independent HTTP Cache-Control extensions
   that allow control over the use of stale responses by caches.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Notational Conventions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  The stale-while-revalidate Cache-Control Extension  . . . . . . 3
     3.1.  Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   4.  The stale-if-error Cache-Control Extension  . . . . . . . . . . 4
     4.1.  Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   7.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements  . . . . . . . . . . 8

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1.  Introduction

   HTTP [RFC2616] requires that caches "respond to a request with the
   most up-to-date response held... that is appropriate to the request,"
   although "in carefully controlled circumstances" a stale response is
   allowed to be returned.  This document defines two independent Cache-
   Control extensions that allow for such control, stale-if-error and
   stale-while-revalidate.

   The stale-if-error HTTP Cache-Control extension allows a cache to
   return a stale response when an error -- e.g., a 500 Internal Server
   Error, a network segment, or DNS failure -- is encountered, rather
   than returning a "hard" error.  This improves availability.

   The stale-while-revalidate HTTP Cache-Control extension allows a
   cache to immediately return a stale response while it revalidates it
   in the background, thereby hiding latency (both in the network and on
   the server) from clients.

2.  Notational Conventions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

   This specification uses the augmented Backus-Naur Form of RFC2616
   [RFC2616], and includes the delta-seconds rule from that
   specification.

3.  The stale-while-revalidate Cache-Control Extension

   When present in an HTTP response, the stale-while-revalidate Cache-
   Control extension indicates that caches MAY serve the response it
   appears in after it becomes stale, up to the indicated number of
   seconds.

     stale-while-revalidate = "stale-while-revalidate" "=" delta-seconds

   If a cached response is served stale due to the presence of this
   extension, the cache SHOULD attempt to revalidate it while still
   serving stale responses (i.e., without blocking).

   Note that "stale" implies that the response will have a non-zero Age
   header and a warning header, as per HTTP's requirements.

   If delta-seconds passes without the cached entity being revalidated,

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   it SHOULD NOT continue to be served stale, absent other information.

3.1.  Example

   A response containing:

     Cache-Control: max-age=600, stale-while-revalidate=30

   indicates that it is fresh for 600 seconds, and it may continue to be
   served stale for up to an additional 30 seconds while an asynchronous
   validation is attempted.  If validation is inconclusive, or if there
   is not traffic that triggers it, after 30 seconds the stale-while-
   revalidate function will cease to operate, and the cached response
   will be "truly" stale (i.e., the next request will block and be
   handled normally).

   Generally, servers will want to set the combination of max-age and
   stale-while-revalidate to the longest total potential freshness
   lifetime that they can tolerate.  For example, with both set to 600,
   the server must be able to tolerate the response being served from
   cache for up to 20 minutes.

   Since asynchronous validation will only happen if a request occurs
   after the response has become stale, but before the end of the stale-
   while-revalidate window, the size of that window and the likelihood
   of a request during it determines how likely it is that all requests
   will be served without delay. if the window is too small, or traffic
   too sparse, some requests will fall outside of it, and block until
   the server can validate the cached response.

4.  The stale-if-error Cache-Control Extension

   The stale-if-error Cache-Control extension indicates that when an
   error is encountered, a cached stale response MAY be used to satisfy
   the request, regardless of other freshness information.

     stale-if-error = "stale-if-error" "=" delta-seconds

   When used as a request Cache-Control extension, its scope of
   application is the request it appears in; when used as a response
   Cache-Control extension, its scope is any request applicable to the
   cached response it occurs in.

   Its value indicates the upper limit to staleness; when the cached
   response is more stale than the indicated amount, the cached response
   SHOULD NOT be used to satisfy the request, absent other information.

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   In this context, an error is any situation which would result in a
   500, 502, 503 or 504 HTTP response status code being returned.

   Note that this directive does not affect freshness; stale cached
   responses that are used SHOULD still be visibly stale when sent
   (i.e., have a non-zero Age header and a warning header, as per HTTP's
   requirements.).

4.1.  Example

   A response containing:

     HTTP/1.1 200 OK
     Cache-Control: max-age=600, stale-if-error=1200
     Content-Type: text/plain

     success

   indicates that it is fresh for 600 seconds, and that it may be used
   if an error is encountered after becoming stale for an additional
   1200 seconds.

   Thus, if the cache attempts to validate 900 seconds afterwards and
   encounters:

     HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
     Content-Type: text/plain

     failure

   the successful response can be returned instead:

     HTTP/1.1 200 OK
     Cache-Control: max-age=600, stale-if-error=1200
     Age: 900
     Content-Type: text/plain

     succcess

   After the age is greater than 1800 seconds (i.e., it has been stale
   for 1200 seconds), the cache must write the error message through.

     HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
     Content-Type: text/plain

     failure

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5.  Security Considerations

   The stale-while-revalidate extension provides origin servers with a
   mechanism for dictating that stale content should be served from
   caches under certain circumstances, with the expectation that the
   cached response will be revalidated in the background.  It is
   suggested that such validation be predicated upon an incoming
   request, to avoid the possibility of an amplification attack (as can
   be seen in some other pre-fetching and automatic refresh mechanisms).
   Cache implementers should keep this in mind when deciding the
   circumstances under which they will generate a request that is not
   directly initiated by a user or client.

   The stale-if-error provides origin servers and clients a mechanism
   for dictating that stale content should be served from caches under
   certain circumstances, and does not pose additional security
   considerations over those of RFC2616, which also allows stale content
   to be served.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no actions for IANA.

7.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2616]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

Appendix A.  Acknowledgements

   Thanks to Ben Drees, John Nienart, Henrik Nordstrom, Evan Torrie, and
   Chris Westin for their suggestions.  The author takes all
   responsibility for errors and omissions.

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Author's Address

   Mark Nottingham
   Yahoo! Inc.

   Email: mnot@yahoo-inc.com
   URI:   http://www.mnot.net/

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