Re: [httpbis] #432: Review Cachability of Status Codes WRT "Negative Caching"

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

I haven't seen any discussion, and this is our last ticket (at least for the moment).

So, I'll make a proposal; we should identify the following additional status codes as cacheable (i.e., eligible for using a heuristic to determine freshness, in the absence of explicit information);

	• 204 (No Content)
	• 404 (Not Found)
	• 405 (Method Not Allowed)
	• 414 (Request URI Too Long)
	• 501 (Not Implemented)
	• 502 (Bad Gateway)
	• 503 (Service Unavailable)
	• 504 (Gateway Timeout)

Note that I'm *not* proposing the following, even though they are negatively cached by some implementations, as I suspect doing so may cause interop problems:

	• 400 (Bad Request)
	• 403 (Forbidden)
	• 500 (Internal Server Error)

Thoughts?



On 11/02/2013, at 5:28 PM, Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]> wrote:

> ... and this is the ticked I just promised:
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: "httpbis" <[e-mail]>
>> Subject: [httpbis] #432: Review Cachability of Status Codes WRT "Negative Caching"
>> Date: 11 February 2013 5:27:44 PM AEDT
>> To: [e-mail]
>> Reply-To: [e-mail]
>> 
>> #432: Review Cachability of Status Codes WRT "Negative Caching"
>> ----------------------------+-----------------------------
>> Reporter:  [e-mail]  |      Owner:
>>    Type:  design          |     Status:  new
>> Priority:  normal          |  Milestone:  unassigned
>> Component:  p6-cache        |   Severity:  In WG Last Call
>> Keywords:                  |     Origin:  #223
>> ----------------------------+-----------------------------
>> Currently, the following status codes are defined as cacheable -- that is,
>> able to be stored without any explicit freshness information:
>> 
>> - 200 (OK)
>> - 203 (Non-Authoritative Information)
>> - 206 (Partial Content)
>> - 300 (Multiple Choices)
>> - 301 (Moved Permanently)
>> - 410 (Gone)
>> 
>> However, many caches store other status codes (often called "Negative
>> Caching")
>> 
>> For example, both Squid and Traffic Server (which have considerable market
>> share, and form the basis of many other implementations) negatively cache
>> the following status codes:
>> 
>> - 204 (No Content)
>> - 400 (Bad Request)
>> - 403 (Forbidden)
>> - 404 (Not Found)
>> - 405 (Method Not Allowed)
>> - 414 (Request URI Too Long)
>> - 500 (Internal Server Error)
>> - 501 (Not Implemented)
>> - 502 (Bad Gateway)
>> - 503 (Service Unavailable)
>> - 504 (Gateway Timeout)
>> 
>> While some of these may be bad to cache by default (in particular, 400 and
>> 500), others may make sense: for example, 204 seems straightforward, and
>> 404 seems high-value.
>> 
>> The major concern here is making semantic changes to the protocol.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Ticket URL: <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/432>
>> httpbis <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/>
>> 
> 
> --
> Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/
> 
> 
> 
> 

--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/