Re: Decision about Host?
Balint Nagy Endre (bne@bne.ind.eunet.hu)
Fri, 6 Oct 1995 01:35:23 +0100 (MET)
M. Hedlund writes:
> At 3:09 PM 10/5/95, Jeffrey Mogul wrote:
> >But then what does it
> >mean if a client sends:
> >
> > Host: www
> >
> >To me, this is an error, and the server can report it as such.
> >What else could it possibly do?
>
> Since the server will presumably still receive HTTP/1.0 requests without
> Host headers, it will need to have a default document root to use in
> response to these requests. So it could:
>
> 1. use a document tree relating to Host if Host exists; and
> 2. use a default document tree if Host is not given or is ambiguous.
>
> Sending a Bad Request error because Host is ambiguous seems too strict.
> Probably neither the user nor the server maintainer will be able to do
> anything about the ambiguity. If server implementations were inconsistent
> about returning this error, the result would be confusion and great
> calamity. Or the like.
Sending 300 will let the user to choose. (And only the user knows, what
he/she meant.)
Server implementors may compete in better choosing of the default choice.
Andrew.