Re: USER_AGENT and Apache 1.2

Martijn Koster (m.koster@webcrawler.com)
Tue, 26 Nov 1996 19:48:17 -0800


At 8:58 AM 11/26/96, Klaus Johannes Rusch wrote:

>Hmmm, I would expect a server to respond with the lowest common denominator of
>protocols, so an HTTP/1.0 request should get an HTTP/1.0 reponse, even if the
>server supports HTTP/1.1 already, shouldn't it?

Check the specs, this isn't required at all. The major version number
cannot be increased by the server, but the minor number can: there are
no differences in parsing between minor protocol changes, only new
semantics for new headers, which it seems you should be able to safely
ignore.

What makes this most confusing is that the HTTP/1.0 RFC actually said
a server should recognise 0.9 and 1.0 requests, and send a response
"in the same protocol version used by the client.".
Note that the 1.1 draft has reworded that: "the same major version used
by the client."

Anyway, I'm sure Roy Fielding would have shot the Apache group
if they got something like this wrong :-)

Check also the Upgrade header in the 1.1 draft, for a mechanism to change
to higher major numbers.

-- Martijn

Email: m.koster@webcrawler.com
WWW: http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/mak.html

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