Re: Claification requested in Host:
touch@isi.edu
Wed, 19 Feb 1997 11:14:00 -0800
> From: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@kiwi.ICS.UCI.EDU>
> >Here is a HTTP 1.1 question for you. According to the spec 14.23, the
> >Host field is defined as
> > "Host" ":" host [ ":" port ]
> >where (in 3.2.2), host is defined as
> > <a legal Internet host domain name or IP address...>
> >
> >The question is whether a single component name consititute a "legal"
> >Internet host domain name? For example, a user types in "foo" at his
> >browser, which runs in domain "xyz.com". The browser is smart enough
> >to assume the use wants to talk to "foo.xyz.com", and hence gets the
> >correct IP address. But in the HTTP request, the browser sends
> > Host : foo
How does a proxy handle this?
This seems like something that should be nailed down in the 1.1 spec.
Consider:
client xxx.foo.com requests
url http://www/file.html
from proxy proxy.com
proxy.com gets request, and looks up what?
www.proxy.com (www in the local context, potentialy)
www.foo.com (suffix the implied client domain)
Problem:
client xxx.blue.foo.com requests same as above
proxy.com tries
www.blue.foo.com, which doesn't exist
client would have found locally the www.foo.com entry,
however
I.e.,
proxy-located resolution of DNS names
forces proxy-local resolution rules
to be applied to partial names
This can be fixed by requiring the client to do resolution
with reverse lookup to submit complete names to the proxy.
The 1.1 spec should require complete names,
either by:
limiting URLs to fully-specified names only
or
requiring client-side completion of partially-specified names.
Joe
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Touch - touch@isi.edu http://www.isi.edu/~touch/
ISI / Project Leader, ATOMIC-2, LSAM http://www.isi.edu/atomic2/
USC / Research Assistant Prof. http://www.isi.edu/lsam/