Protocol Action: Instance Digests in HTTP to Proposed Standard
The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org> Mon, 19 November 2001 23:13 UTC
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From: The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org>
Subject: Protocol Action: Instance Digests in HTTP to Proposed Standard
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 17:55:26 -0500
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The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'Instance Digests in HTTP' <draft-mogul-http-digest-05.txt> as a Proposed Standard. This has been reviewed in the IETF but is not the product of an IETF Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Patrik Faltstrom and Ned Freed. Technical Summary HTTP/1.1 defines a Content-MD5 header that allows a server to include a digest of the response body. However, this is specifically defined to cover the body of the actual message, not the contents of the full file (which might be quite different, if the response is a Content-Range, or uses a delta encoding). Also, the Content-MD5 is limited to one specific digest algorithm; other algorithms, such as SHA-1, may be more appropriate in some circumstances. Finally, HTTP/1.1 provides no explicit mechanism by which a client may request a digest. This document proposes HTTP extensions that solve these problems. Working Group Summary This is an individual submission to the IETF, but, the document has been discussed on various mailing lists which have to do with the HTTP protocol. Protocol Quality The spec was reviewed by Patrik Faltstrom.