Re: ISSUE PROXY-AUTHORIZATION: Proposal wording

Koen Holtman (koen@win.tue.nl)
Wed, 9 Jul 1997 20:26:16 +0200 (MET DST)


Dave Kristol:
>
>At 9:34 PM +0200 7/8/97, Koen Holtman wrote:
>> [...]
>>I don't want proxies to be `creative'.  I think that HTTP/1.x should
>>not allow creative proxies, and am against weakening MUSTs to allow
>>such creativity.
>>
>>If you want a new creative service in a proxy, call it a HTTP/1.1
>>proxy which implements the `creative-authentication-rewrite' protocol
>>extension on top of HTTP/1.1.  The use of creative extensions can be
>>negotiated either in-band or out-of-band.
>
>This semantic fussing seems to get us nowhere.  Is an "HTTP/1.1 proxy that
>implements custom feature X" an HTTP/1.1 proxy or not?  Your first
>paragraph says "no"; your second implies "yes".

No, it is not a HTTP/1.1 proxy.
Yes, it is a HTTP/1.1 proxy with a protocol extension.

I don't see what is so difficult about it.

I have no problems with people putting creative protocol extensions
which violate a MUST in HTTP/1.1 in their proxies.  I would only have
problems if people would go around distributing, or making available,
these proxies as being fully HTTP/1.1 conformant, without telling
anybody about the extra `special stuff'.

We need to draw a firm line between `plain' and `extented', else there
will be all kinds of trouble when cascaded proxy networks which span
multiple organisations are going to be built.

>Dave Kristol

Koen.