Re: Microsoft proxy
Roy T. Fielding (fielding@kiwi.ics.uci.edu)
Thu, 01 Oct 1998 18:07:28 -0700
>On the other hand, the proxy detected an error and attempted to report
>it. The question to me would hinge on whether the proxy then did
>a connection reset or normal close.
The proxy is broken. The only thing it needs to do to "report"
a dropped connection is to close its own connection with the client.
That is why we have both content-length and the chunked encoding.
>I don't believe that HTTP is well architected for recovering
>partial transfers or in some cases even detecting incomplete transfers
>except those initiated by the client. Without architected error recovery,
>its all up to the implementation.
It is all up to the implementation in any case. Partial transfers are
easily and completely recoverable for HTTP/1.1. The only thing it is
missing is some indication of the reason why the connection was dropped,
but that is hard to do without multiplexing or a separate control channel.
That was wisely left for a major protocol revision.
....Roy