INTERNET-DRAFT HTTP Extensions H. Frystyk Nielsen, W3C
draft-frystyk-http-extensions-01 P. Leach, Microsoft
Scott Lawrence, Agranat Systems
Expires: May 11, 1999 Wednesday, November 11, 1998
HTTP Extension Framework
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Abstract
A wide range of applications have proposed various extensions of the
HTTP protocol. Current efforts span an enormous range, including
distributed authoring, collaboration, printing, and remote procedure
call mechanisms. However, HTTP extensions are uncoordinated, and there
has been no standard framework for defining extensions or keeping them
separate from each other. This document describes a generic extension
mechanism for HTTP/1.1, which is designed to address the tension between
private agreement and public specification and to accommodate extension
of applications using HTTP clients, servers, and proxies. The proposal
associates each extension with a globally unique identifier, and uses
HTTP header fields to carry the extension identifier and related
information between the parties involved in the extended communication.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction........................................................2
2. Notational Conventions..............................................3
3. Extension Declarations..............................................3
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3.1 Header Field Prefixes............................................4
4. Extension Header Fields.............................................5
4.1 End-to-End Extensions............................................5
4.2 Hop-by-Hop Extensions............................................6
4.3 Extension Response Header Fields.................................6
5. Mandatory HTTP Requests.............................................7
5.1 Fulfilling a Mandatory Request...................................8
6. Mandatory HTTP Responses............................................9
7. 510 Not Extended....................................................9
8. Publishing an Extension............................................10
9. Caching Considerations.............................................11
10. Security Considerations...........................................11
11. References........................................................11
12. Acknowledgements..................................................12
13. Authors Addresses.................................................12
14. Summary of Protocol Interactions..................................12
15. Examples..........................................................13
15.1 User Agent to Origin Server....................................14
15.2 User Agent to Origin Server via HTTP/1.1 Proxy.................14
15.3 User Agent to Origin Server via HTTP/1.0 Proxy.................15
1. Introduction
This proposal is designed to address the tension between private
agreement and public specification; and to accommodate dynamic extension
of HTTP clients and servers by software components. The kind of
extensions capable of being introduced range from:
o extending a single HTTP message;
o introducing new encodings;
o initiating HTTP-derived protocols for new applications; to...
o switching to protocols which, once initiated, run independent of
the original protocol stack.
The proposal is intended to be used as follows:
o Some party designs and specifies an extension; the party assigns
the extension a globally unique address (URI), and makes one or
more representations of the extension available at that address
(see section 8).
o An HTTP client or server that implements this extension mechanism
(hereafter called an agent) declares the use of the extension by
referencing its URI in an extension declaration in an HTTP message
(see section 3).
o The HTTP application which the extension declaration is intended
for (hereafter called the ultimate recipient) can deduce how to
properly interpret the extended message based on the extension
declaration.
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The proposal uses features in HTTP/1.1 but is compatible with HTTP/1.0
applications in such a way that extended applications can coexist with
existing HTTP applications. Applications implementing this proposal MUST
be based on HTTP/1.1 (or later versions of HTTP).
2. Notational Conventions
This specification uses the same notational conventions and basic
parsing constructs as RFC 2068 [5]. In particular the BNF constructs
"token", "quoted-string", "Request-Line", "field-name", and
"absoluteURI" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC
2068 [5].
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 [6].
This proposal does not rely on particular features defined in URLs [8]
that cannot potentially be expressed using URNs (see section 8).
Therefore, the more generic term URI [8] is used throughout the
specification.
3. Extension Declarations
An extension declaration can be used to indicate that an extension has
been applied to a message and possibly to reserve a part of the header
namespace identified by a header field prefix (see 3.1).
This specification does not define any ramifications of applying an
extension to a message nor whether two extensions can or cannot
logically coexist within the same message. It is simply a framework for
describing which extensions have been applied and what the ultimate
recipient either must or may do in order to properly interpret any
extension declarations within that message.
The grammar for an extension declaration is as follows:
ext-decl = <"> ( absoluteURI | field-name ) <">
";" namespace [ decl-extensions ]
decl-extensions = *( decl-ext )
namespace = "ns" "=" header-prefix
header-prefix = 2*DIGIT "-"
decl-ext = ";" token [ "=" ( token | quoted-string ) ]
An extension is identified by an absolute, globally unique URI or a
field-name. A field-name MUST specify a header field uniquely defined in
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an IETF Standards Track RFC [3]. A URI can unambiguously be
distinguished from a field-name by the presence of a colon (":"). The
support for header field names as extension identifiers provides a
transition strategy from decentralized extensions to extensions defined
by IETF Standards Track RFCs.
Examples of extension declarations are
"http://www.company.com/extension"; ns=11-
"Range"; ns=13-
An extension declaration can be extended through the use of one or more
decl-ext parameters. Unrecognized decl-ext parameters SHOULD be ignored
and MUST NOT be removed by proxies when forwarding the extension
declaration.
3.1 Header Field Prefixes
The header-prefix are dynamically generated header field prefix strings
that can be used to indicate that all header fields in the message
matching the header-prefix value using string prefix-matching are
introduced by this extension instance. This allows an extension instance
to dynamically reserve a subspace of the header space in a protocol
message in order to prevent header field name clashes. Prefixes are
primarily intended to avoid header field name conflicts and to allow
multiple instances of a single extension using its own header fields to
be applied to the same message without conflicting with each other.
Linear white space (LWS) MUST NOT be used between the digits and the
dash ("-"). The format of the prefix using a combination of digits and
the dash ("-") guarantees that no extension declaration can reserve the
whole header field name space.
Agents MUST NOT reuse header-prefix values in the same message unless
explicitly allowed by the extension (see section 4.1 for a discussion of
the ultimate recipient of an extension declaration).
Clients SHOULD be as consistent as possible when generating header-
prefix values as this facilitates use of the Vary header field in
responses that vary as a function of the request extension
declaration(s) (see [5], section 13.6).
Examples of header-prefix values are
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12-
15-
23-
Old applications may introduce header fields independent of this
extension mechanism, potentially conflicting with header fields
introduced by the prefix mechanism. In order to minimize this risk,
prefixes MUST contain at least 2 digits.
4. Extension Header Fields
This proposal introduces two types of extension declaration strength:
mandatory and optional, and two types of extension declaration scope:
hop-by-hop and end-to-end (see section 4.1 and 4.2).
A mandatory extension declaration indicates that the ultimate recipient
MUST consult and adhere to the rules given by the extension when
processing the message or reporting an error (see section 5 and 7).
An optional extension declaration indicates that the ultimate recipient
of the extension MAY consult and adhere to the rules given by the
extension when processing the message, or ignore the extension
declaration completely. An agent may not be able to distinguish whether
the ultimate recipient does not understand an extension referred to by
an optional extension or simply ignores the extension declaration.
The combination of the declaration strength and scope defines a 2x2
matrix which is distinguished by four new general HTTP header fields:
Man, Opt, C-Man, and C-Opt. (See section 4.1 and 4.2, and appendix 14
for a table of interactions with origin servers and proxies.)
The header fields are general header fields as they describe which
extensions actually are applied to an HTTP message. Optional
declarations MAY be applied to any HTTP message without any change to
existing HTTP semantics. Mandatory declarations MUST be applied to a
request message as described in section 5 and to a response message as
described in section 6.
4.1 End-to-End Extensions
End-to-end declarations MUST be transmitted to the ultimate recipient of
the declaration. The Man and the Opt general header fields are end-to-
end header fields and are defined as follows:
mandatory = "Man" ":" 1#ext-decl
optional = "Opt" ":" 1#ext-decl
For example
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HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 421
Opt: "http://www.digest.org/Digest"; ns=15-
15-digest: "snfksjgor2tsajkt52"
...
The ultimate recipient of a mandatory end-to-end extension declaration
MUST handle that extension declaration as described in section 5 and 6.
4.2 Hop-by-Hop Extensions
Hop-by-hop extension declarations are meaningful only for a single HTTP
connection. In HTTP/1.1, the C-Man and the C-Opt header field MUST be
protected by a Connection header field. That is, the header fields are
to be included as Connection header field directives (see [5], section
14.10). The two header fields have the following grammar:
c-mandatory = "C-Man" ":" 1#ext-decl
c-optional = "C-Opt" ":" 1#ext-decl
For example
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: some.host
C-Man: "http://www.digest.org/ProxyAuth"; ns=14-
14-Credentials="g5gj262jdw@4df"
Connection: C-Man, 14-Credentials
The ultimate recipient of a mandatory hop-by-hop extension declaration
MUST handle that extension declaration as described in section 5 and 6.
4.3 Extension Response Header Fields
Two extension response header fields are used to indicate that a request
containing mandatory extension declarations has been fulfilled by the
ultimate recipient as described in section 5.1. The extension response
header fields are exclusively intended to serve as extension
acknowledgements and can not carry any other information.
The Ext header field is used to indicate that all end-to-end mandatory
extension declarations in the request were fulfilled:
ext = "Ext" ":"
The C-Ext response header field is used to indicate that all hop-by-hop
mandatory extension declarations in the request were fulfilled.
c-ext = "C-Ext" ":"
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In HTTP/1.1, the C-Ext header field MUST be protected by a Connection
header (see [5], section 14.10).
The Ext and the C-Ext header fields are not mutually exclusive, they can
both occur within the same message as described in section 5.1.
5. Mandatory HTTP Requests
An HTTP request is called a mandatory request if it includes at least
one mandatory extension declaration (using the Man or the C-Man header
fields). The method name of a mandatory request MUST be prefixed by "M-
". For example, a client might express the binding rights-management
constraints in an HTTP PUT request as follows:
M-PUT /a-resource HTTP/1.1
Man: "http://www.copyright.org/rights-management"; ns=16-
16-copyright: http://www.copyright.org/COPYRIGHT.html
16-contributions: http://www.copyright.org/PATCHES.html
Host: www.w3.org
Content-Length: 1203
Content-Type: text/html
<!doctype html ...
An ultimate recipient conforming to this specification receiving a
mandatory request MUST process the request by performing the following
actions in the order listed below:
1. Identify all mandatory extension declarations (both hop-by-hop and
end-to-end); the server MAY ignore optional declarations without
affecting the result of processing the HTTP message;
2. Examine all extensions identified in 1) and determine if they are
supported for this message. If not, respond with a 510 (Not
Extended) status-code (see section 7);
3. If 2) did not result in a 510 (Not Extended) status code, then
strip the "M-" prefix from the method name and process the
remainder of the request according to the semantics of the
extensions and of the existing HTTP/1.1 method name as defined in
[5].
4. If the evaluation in 3) was successful and the mandatory request
fulfilled, the server MUST respond as defined in section 5.1. A
server MUST NOT fulfill a request without understanding and
obeying all mandatory extension declaration(s) in a request.
A proxy that does not act as the ultimate recipient of a mandatory
extension declaration MUST NOT remove the extension declaration or the
"M-" method name prefix when forwarding the message. HTTP proxies that
do not understand the "M-" method name prefix SHOULD return 501 (Not
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Implemented) or turn themselves into a tunnel (see [5]) in which case
they do not take any part in the communication.
A server receiving an HTTP/1.0 (or earlier versions of HTTP) message
that includes a Connection header MUST, for each connection-token in
this field, remove and ignore any header field(s) from the message with
the same name as the connection-token.
A server receiving a mandatory request including the "M-" method name
prefix without any mandatory extension declarations to follow MUST
return a 510 (Not Extended) response.
The "M-" prefix is reserved by this proposal and MUST NOT be used by
other HTTP extensions.
5.1 Fulfilling a Mandatory Request
A server MUST NOT claim to have fulfilled a mandatory request unless it
understood and obeyed all the mandatory extension declarations in the
request. This section defines a mechanism for conveying this information
to the client in such a way that it interoperates with existing HTTP
applications.
If any end-to-end mandatory extension declarations were among the
fulfilled extensions then the server MUST include an Ext response header
field in the response. In order to avoid that the Ext header field
inadvertently is cached in an HTTP/1.1 cache, the response MUST contain
a no-cache cache-control directive. If the response is otherwise
cachable, the no-cache cache-control directive SHOULD be limited to only
affect the Ext header field:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Ext:
Cache-Control: no-cache="Ext"
...
If the mandatory request has been forwarded by an HTTP/1.0 intermediary
proxy then this is indicated either directly in the Request-Line or by
the presence of an HTTP/1.1 Via header field. In this case, the server
MUST include an Expires header field with a date equal to or earlier
than the value of the Date header field. If the response is otherwise
cachable by HTTP/1.1 caches, the server SHOULD include an appropriate
max-age cache-control directive:
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HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:12:31 GMT
Expires: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:12:31 GMT
Ext:
Cache-Control: no-cache="Ext", max-age=3600
...
If any hop-by-hop mandatory extension declarations were among the
fulfilled extensions then the server MUST include a C-Ext response
header field in the response. The C-Ext header field MUST be protected
by a Connection header field (see [5], section 14.10).
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
C-Ext:
Connection: C-Ext
Note, that the Ext and C-Ext header fields are not mutually exclusive;
they can be both be present in a response when fulfilling mandatory
request containing both hop-by-hop as well as end-to-end mandatory
extension declarations.
6. Mandatory HTTP Responses
A server MUST NOT include mandatory extension declarations in an HTTP
response unless it is responding to a mandatory HTTP request whose
definition allowed for the mandatory response or if the server has some
apriori knowledge that the recipient can handle the extended response. A
server MAY include optional extension declarations in any HTTP response
(see section 4).
If a client is the ultimate recipient of a mandatory HTTP response
containing mandatory extension declarations that either the client does
not understand or does not want to use, then it SHOULD discard the
complete response as if it were a 500 (Internal Server Error) response.
7. 510 Not Extended
The policy for accessing the resource has not been met in the request.
The server SHOULD send back all the information necessary for the client
to issue an extended request. It is outside the scope of this
specification to specify how the extensions inform the client.
If the 510 response contains information about extensions that were not
present in the initial request then the client MAY repeat the request if
it has reason to believe it can fulfill the extension policy by
modifying the request according to the information provided in the 510
response. Otherwise the client MAY present any entity included in the
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510 response to the user, since that entity may include relevant
diagnostic information.
8. Publishing an Extension
While the protocol extension definition should be published at the
address of the extension identifier, this is not a requirement of this
specification. The only absolute requirement is that extension
identifiers MUST be globally unique identifiers and that distinct names
be used for distinct semantics.
Likewise, applications are not required to attempt resolving extension
identifiers included in an extension declaration. The only absolute
requirement is that an application MUST NOT claim conformance with an
extension that it does not recognize regardless of whether it has tried
to resolve the extension identifier or not. This document does not
provide any policy for how long or how often an application may attempt
to resolve an extension identifier.
The association between the extension identifier and the specification
might be made by distributing a specification, which references the
extension identifier.
It is strongly recommended that the integrity and persistence of the
extension identifier be maintained and kept unquestioned throughout the
lifetime of the extension. Care should be taken not to distribute
conflicting specifications that reference the same name. Even when an
extension specification is made available at the address of the URI,
care must be taken that the specification made available at that address
does not change over time. One agent may associate the identifier with
the old semantics, and another might associate it with the new
semantics.
The extension definition may be made available in different
representations ranging from
o a human-readable specification defining the extension semantics
(see for example [7]),
o downloadable code which implements the semantics defined by the
extension,
o a formal interface description provided by the extension, to
o a machine-readable specification defining the extension semantics.
For example, a software component that implements the specification may
reside at the same address as a human-readable specification
(distinguished by content negotiation). The human-readable
representation serves to document the extension and encourage
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deployment, while the software component allows clients and servers to
be dynamically extended.
9. Caching Considerations
Use of extensions using the syntax defined by this document may have
additional implications on the cachability of HTTP response messages
other than the ones described in section 5.1.
The originator of an extended message should be able to determine from
the semantics of the extension whether or not the extension's presence
impacts the cachability of the response message. If an extension does
change the default cachability of the response, the originator MUST
include a Cache-Control header field containing the cache directives
corresponding to the desired result of the extended semantics.
10. Security Considerations
Dynamic installation of extension facilities as described in the
introduction involves software written by one party (the provider of the
implementation) to be executed under the authority of another (the party
operating the host software). This opens the host party to a variety of
"Trojan horse" attacks by the provider, or a malicious third party that
forges implementations under a provider's name. See, for example RFC2046
[4], section 4.5.2 for a discussion of these risks.
11. References
[1] D. H. Crocker. "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
Messages", STD 11, RFC 822, UDEL, August 1982
[2] T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, H. Frystyk, "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945, W3C/MIT, UC Irvine, W3C/MIT, May
1996.
[3] S. Bradner, "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", RFC
2026, Harvard University, October 1996
[4] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
(MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046, Innosoft, First Virtual,
November 1996.
[5] R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. C. Mogul, H. Frystyk, T. Berners-Lee,
"Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2068, U.C. Irvine,
DEC W3C/MIT, DEC, W3C/MIT, W3C/MIT, January 1997
[6] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels", RFC 2119, Harvard University, March 1997
[7] L. Masinter, "Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)",
RFC 2324, Xerox PARC, 1 April 1998
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[8] T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 12, 1998
[9] H. F. Nielsen, D. Connolly, R. Khare, "PEP - an extension mechanism
for HTTP", draft-http-pep-05.txt, November 21, 1997. This work has
expired
12. Acknowledgements
Roy Fielding, Rohit Khare, and Yaron Y. Goland deserve special
recognition for their efforts in commenting in all phases of this
specification. Also thanks to Josh Cohen, Ross Patterson, Jim Gettys,
Larry Masinter, and to the people involved in PEP [9].
The contribution of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) staff is part of the
W3C HTTP Activity (see "http://www.w3.org/Protocols/Activity").
13. Authors Addresses
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen
Technical Staff, World Wide Web Consortium
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
545 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Email: frystyk@w3.org
Paul J. Leach
Microsoft Corporation
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052, USA
Email: paulle@microsoft.com
Scott Lawrence
Agranat Systems, Inc.
1345 Main Street
Waltham, MA 02154, USA
Email: lawrence@agranat.com
Appendices
14. Summary of Protocol Interactions
The following tables summarize the outcome of strength and scope rules
of the mandatory proposal of compliant and non-compliant HTTP proxies
and origin servers. The summary is intended as a guide and index to the
text, but is necessarily cryptic and incomplete. This summary should
never be used or referenced separately from the complete specification.
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Table 1: Origin Server
Scope Hop-by-hop End-to-end
Strength Optional Required Optional Required
(may) (must) (may) (must)
Mandatory Standard 501 (Not Standard 501 (Not
unsupported processing Implemented)processing Implemented)
Extension Standard 510 (Not Standard 510 (Not
unsupported processing Extended) processing Extended)
Extension Extended Extended Extended Extended
supported processing processing processing processing
Table 2: Proxy Server
Scope Hop-by-hop End-to-end
Strength Optional Required Optional Required
(may) (must) (may) (must)
Mandatory Strip 501 (Not Forward 501 (Not
unsupported extension Implemented)extension Implemented)
or tunnel or tunnel
Extension Strip 510 (Not Forward Forward
unsupported extension Extended) extension extension
Extension Extended Extended Extended Extended
supported processing processing processing, processing,
and strip and strip may strip may strip
15. Examples
The following examples show various scenarios using mandatory in
HTTP/1.1 requests and responses. Information not essential for
illustrating the examples is left out (referred to as "...")
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15.1 User Agent to Origin Server
Table 3: User Agent directly to origin server
Client issues a M-GET <some-address> HTTP/1.1
request with one Opt: <ext-1>
optional and one Man: <ext-2>
mandatory ...
extension
Origin server HTTP/1.1 200 OK
accepts the Ext:
mandatory Cache-Control: max-age=120, no-cache="Ext"
extension but ...
ignores the
optional one. The
client can not see
in this case that
the optional
extension was
ignored.
15.2 User Agent to Origin Server via HTTP/1.1 Proxy
These two examples show how an extended request interacts with an
HTTP/1.1 proxy.
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Table 4: HTTP/1.1 Proxy forwards extended request
Client issues a M-GET <some-address> HTTP/1.1
request with one C-Opt: <ext-1>
optional and one C-Man: <ext-2>
mandatory hop-by- Connection: C-Opt, C-Man
hop extension ...
HTTP/1.1 proxy M-GET <some-address> HTTP/1.1
forwards the Via: 1.1 new
request and takes ...
out the connection
headers
Origin server HTTP/1.1 510 Not Extended
fails as the ...
request does not
contain any
information
belonging to the
M-GET method
Table 5: HTTP/1.1 Proxy does not forward extended request
Client issues a M-GET <some-address> HTTP/1.1
request with one C-Opt: <ext-1>
optional and one C-Man: <ext-2>
mandatory hop-by- Connection: C-Opt, C-Man
hop extension ...
HTTP/1.1 proxy HTTP/1.1 501 Not Implemented
refuses to forward ...
the M-GET method
and returns an
error
Origin server
never sees the
extended request
15.3 User Agent to Origin Server via HTTP/1.0 Proxy
These two examples show how an extended request interacts with an
HTTP/1.0 proxy in the message path
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Table 6: HTTP/1.0 Proxy forwards extended request
Client issues a M-GET <some-address> HTTP/1.1
request with one Man: <ext-6>
mandatory ...
extension
HTTP/1.0 proxy M-GET <some-address> HTTP/1.0
forwards the Man: <ext-6>
request as a ...
HTTP/1.0 request
without changing
the method
Origin server HTTP/1.1 200 OK
accepts <ext-6> Ext:
and returns a 200 Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:12:31 GMT
response and an Expires: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:12:31 GMT
extension Cache-Control: no-cache="Ext", max-age=600
acknowledgement. ...
The response can
be cached by
HTTP/1.1 caches
for 10 minutes.
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Table 7: HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 Proxy Chain
Client issues a M-GET <some-address> HTTP/1.1
request with one Man: <ext-1>
mandatory and one C-Opt: <ext-2>
hop-by-hop Connection: C-Opt
optional extension ...
HTTP/1.0 proxy M-GET <some-address> HTTP/1.0
forwards the Man: <ext-1>
request as C-Opt: <ext-2>
HTTP/1.0 request Connection: C-Man
without changing ...
the method and
without honoring
the Connection
header field.
HTTP/1.1 proxy M-GET <some-address> HTTP/1.1
deletes (and Man: <ext-1>
ignores) the C-Man: <ext-5>
optional extension Connection: C-Man
and forwards the Via: 1.0 new
rest including a ...
via header field.
It also add it's
own hop-by-hop
mandatory
extension
Origin server HTTP/1.1 200 OK
accepts both Ext:
mandatory C-Ext
extensions. The Connection: C-Man
response is not Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:12:31 GMT
cachable by the Expires: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:12:31 GMT
HTTP/1.0 cache but Cache-Control: no-cache="Ext", max-age=3600
can be cached for ...
1 hour by HTTP/1.1
caches.
HTTP/1.1 proxy HTTP/1.1 200 OK
removes the hop- Ext:
by-hop extension Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:12:31 GMT
acknowledgement Expires: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:12:31 GMT
and forwards the Cache-Control: no-cache="Ext", max-age=3600
remainder of the ...
response.
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