🚀 go-pugleaf

RetroBBS NetNews Server

Inspired by RockSolid Light RIP Retro Guy

Article View: demon.ip.developers
Article #184

Re: Webpage termination

#184
From: Ian Smith
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 00:00
63 lines
3015 bytes
On Friday, in article
     <912159295.19386.0.nnrp-11.c30b3753@news.demon.co.uk>
     fanf@demon.net "Tony Finch" wrote:

> ian@isis.demon.co.uk (Ian Smith) wrote:
> >
> >Anybody know what the options are for how webpage servers terminate 
> >their page transmissions ?
> 
> There is either keep-alive (aka persistent connections) or no
> keep-alive. HTTP/1.0 doesn't include the keep-alive features, so if
> you are using that protocol the connection should close immediately
> after the response has been sent.

I'm talking HTTP/1.0 to the server and it's talking HTTP/1.0 back. I'm 
not sending a Keep-alive header. The server is OS2HTTPD 1.04, for 
whatever that's worth, and it's my belief that it never closes (within 
the limits of my patience :).
 
> I have seen interoperability bugs like this before -- particularly,
> Netscape Enterprise Server tries to do keep-alive with HTTP/0.9
> requests. This is a bit of a disaster since HTTP/0.9 has no way to
> know the data is complete other than by observing that the connection
> has closed, wheras HTTP/1.* has Content-Length: headers.
> 
> To give any definitive answer, I'd have to see a dump of the complete
> exchange, particularly the HTTP/x.x version tags on the requests and
> responses, and the contents of any Connection: headers. Note that our
> current proxy caches do not all support persistent connections.

The direct request packet is pretty stark:

GET / HTTP/1.0
User-Agent: YAN/2.2 (KA9Q; DOS; x86)

And the response is standard as well:

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Thursday, 26-Nov-98 00 GMT
Server: OS2HTTPD 1.04
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/html
Last-modified: Saturday, 21-Nov-98 00 GMT
Content-length: 10778

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
...
</HTML>

The page collected direct (after I've forced the connection to close) 
is identical to what Demon's proxy returns normally. I've not tried to 
force a refresh of the proxy cache.

Do Demon's proxies act on Content-Length irrespective of receiving a 
close ? If so, that would fit with what happens, because the KA9Q 
httpcli just waits for the close since the Content-Length header is 
currently discarded.

Ian.
-- 
  |  Ian Smith             |  "The Moving Finger writes;
  |  ian@isis.demon.co.uk  |   and, having writ, Moves on."
Technical Details
Message-ID: <912196999snz@isis.demon.co.uk>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!unknown!not-for-mail
References: <912152599snz@isis.demon.co.uk> <912159295.19386.0.nnrp-11.c30b3753@news.demon.co.uk>

Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 10bb05,e2a581c63e91000a
X-Google-Attributes: gid10bb05,public
From: ian@isis.demon.co.uk (Ian Smith)
Subject: Re: Webpage termination
Date: 1998/11/27
Message-ID: <912196999snz@isis.demon.co.uk>
X-Deja-AN: 416440302
X-NNTP-Posting-Host: isis.demon.co.uk:158.152.16.233
References: <912152599snz@isis.demon.co.uk> <912159295.19386.0.nnrp-11.c30b3753@news.demon.co.uk>
X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net
X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 912239918 nnrp-11:25617 NO-IDENT isis.demon.co.uk:158.152.16.233
Organization: DIS(organised)
Reply-To: ian@isis.demon.co.uk
Newsgroups: demon.ip.developers