CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Jim Gettys/DEC - W3C Minutes of the HyperText Transfer Protocol Working Group (HTTP) These minutes are based on notes taken by Henrik Nielsen. HTTP 1.0 A final draft needs to be produced before the group can finish all discussion. The draft will be available 1 August, for anticipated Last Call later in the month. Access Authentication - MD5 Digest There are really no objections to the current state of this proposal. HTTP does not provide the possibility of having MIME headers after the HTTP object. There are multiple implementations: o NCSA server and client o Spyglass o Dave Kristol's server HTTP Session Extension Ted Hardie, NASA, led this discussion. o This proposal would avoid TCP latency, overhead, and slow start performance problems. o Ted described a proposal from Alex Hopmann, who was not present. o Henrik noted that Request-ID header makes the proposal more flexible as the server can send them back out of order o There was general talk about sessions with a server. o Jeff Mogul of DECWRL has made an extensive study and simulation of persistent connection HTTP. The results of this work can be found at: http://www.research.digital.com/wrl/publications/abstracts/95.4.html o Is it a good idea to save headers while a connection is kept alive? - Eric Sink: No big advantage -- 10% (from implementation). - Larry Masinter: for almost all headers, it's a win; the only issue is those headers for which there is no way to say 'the default' by giving a header explicitly. - Authentication may be the biggest performance win. o A number of implementations were mentioned; performance is unclear, and most likely to be seen over long haul and dial up lines, rather than in a local network, where most naive tests are performed. o The general consensus is that persistent connections are a good idea. There are concerns about upward compatibility and interoperability with 1.0; this may or may not require 1.1; it was suggested that operation under 1.0 might be written up as an experimental protocol. o An open question is the timeouts for the TCP connection; there is some data from Jeff Mogul's simulation. Problem With HTTP PUT and POST Henrik Nielsen described a problem with HTTP PUT and POST that has recently been uncovered, and solicited feedback. HTTP/1.1 A HTTP/1.1 draft will be available in mid-August. HTTP/NG HTTP/NG: Andy Norman, Ange@hplb.hpl.hp.com. Stefek Zaba has an experimental implementation of what they call HTTP/NG, and has been talking to Simon Spero. Simon was not at the meeting, so there was little discussion of NG. Larry Masinter pointed out that people are trying to do transactions with HTTP when HTTP does not have a transaction mechanism (e.g., when you try to abort an operation in the middle, you have no way to know whether or not it completed). Many RPC implementations do what people are trying to do with HTTP-NG: keep connections open, let them time out, handle more complex operations, interleave multiple calls and results on the same connection. This begs the question: Who has implemented a non-blocking (streaming) RPC system that can be used if we are to avoid rolling our own? Does it have the needed facilities? John Klensin, Applications Area co-Director, expressed great displeasure with the current state of the working group. Some issues he raised, but not necessarily an exhaustive list include: o Working group chairs that do not warn the Area Director before an IETF meeting that they cannot attend are asking to be shot. John promised to convey his displeasure directly to the chairs. o How will we make progress? o We have a collective problem in the working group. We should stick to the milestones. o Without NG as a milestone for this group, 1.1 will likely end up out of control. Without Simon Spero present, and with his RSI problems, John is very concerned about NG. Jim Gettys volunteered to edit HTTP/NG, if Simon is unable to deal with it due to his problems. When will it become a Proposed Standard? Harald Alvestrand, Applications Area co-Director, noted that there is no reason to wait for an IETF meeting to send a document to the IESG for standardization. Proposed New Milestones Aug 1995 Send HTTP/1.0 of to the IESG as a Proposed Standard. Oct 1995 Session as experimental extension. Apr 1996 HTTP/1.1 as Proposed Standard. Dec 1996 HTTP/NG as Proposed Standard. Jim Gettys volunteered to help Simon with writing.