HyperText Transfer Protocol (http) ---------------------------------- Charter Last Modified: 10/11/2000 Current Status: Concluded Working Group Chair(s): L Masinter Applications Area Director(s): Ned Freed Patrik Faltstrom Applications Area Advisor: Patrik Faltstrom Mailing Lists: General Discussion:http-wg@hplb.hp.com To Subscribe: http-wg-request@hplb.hp.com In Body: subscribe http-wg Your Full Name Archive: http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/hypermail Description of Working Group: Note: This working group is jointly chartered by the Applications Area and the Transport Services Area. The HTTP Working Group will work on the specification of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP is a data access protocol currently run over TCP and is the basis of the World-Wide Web. The initial work will be to document existing practice and short-term extensions. Subsequent work will be to extend and revise the protocol. Directions which have already been mentioned include: o improved efficiency, o extended operations, o extended negotiation, o richer metainformation, and o ties with security protocols. Note: the HTTP working group will not address HTTP security extensions as these are expected to be the topic of another working group. Background information The initial specification of the HTTP protocol was kept in hypertext form and a snapshot circulated as an Internet draft between 11/93 and 5/94. A revision of the specification by Berners-Lee, Fielding and Frystyk Nielsen has been circulated as an Internet draft between 11/94 and 5/95. An overview of the state of the specifications and a repository of pointers to HTTP resources may be found at http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Protocols/Overview.html Once established, the working group will expand and complete that document to reflect HTTP/1.0 as it has been implemented by World-Wide Web clients and servers prior to November 1994. The resulting specification of HTTP/1.0 will be published for review as an Internet-Draft and, if deemed appropriate, will be submitted to the IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard or Informational RFC. In parallel with the above effort, the working group will consider enhancements/restrictions to the current practice in order to form a specification of the HTTP protocol suitable for eventual consideration as a proposed standard. Also in parallel with the above efforts, the working group will engage in defining (or selecting from various definitions) a next-generation protocol for hypertext transfer (HTTPng). A description of HTTP/1.0 as it is generally practiced currently on the Internet has been submitted to become an Informational RFC. The working group is considering enhancements/restrictions to the current practice in order to form a specification of the HTTP protocol suitable for eventual consideration as a proposed standard. Goals and Milestones: Done Review draft charter for discussion at the Chicago WWWF'94 conference. Invest an interim Chair for the working group. Determine writing assignments for first draft of HTTP/1.0 document. Done Draft working group charter. Establish mailing list and archive. Done Meet at the San Jose IETF as a BOF. Review HTTP/1.0 Internet-Draft and decide whether it should be published as Informational, should be a candidate for further working group development, or should be allowed to expire. Determine writing assignments for first drafts of the HTTP/1.1 or HTTPng documents. Establish charter and submit to IESG Done Publish an Internet-Draft on HTTP as reflected by current practice (HTTP/1.0) Done Revise the Internet-Draft on HTTP/1.0 and, if desired, submit to the IESG for consideration under the category determined at San Jose IETF. Done Final review of HTTP/1.1 draft at the Danvers IETF. Revise HTTP/1.1 draft and submit to IESG for consideration as Proposed Standard. Review progress on HTTPng. Done Final review of HTTPng draft at the Dallas IETF. Revise HTTPng draft and submit to IESG for consideration as Proposed Standard. Retrospective look at the activities of the HTTP WG. Done Initial publication of HTTP/1.1 proposal from document editors. Done Publish Internet-Drafts on HTTP/1.0 Done Complete review of HTTP/1.1 proposal and pending I-Ds by subgroups: Persistent connections; cache-control and proxy behavior; content negotiation; authentication;state management;range retrievals; extension mechanisms; other new methods and header features. Done Submit HTTP/1.1 as Internet-Draft (editing team led by Jim Gettys). Done Submit HTTP/1.1 to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard. Done Review additional features for HTTP/1.1 Done Submit HTTP/1.2 to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard. Internet-Drafts: No Current Internet-Drafts. Request For Comments: RFC Stat Published Title ------- -- ----------- ------------------------------------ RFC1945 I MAY 96 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0 RFC2068 PS JAN 97 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1 RFC2069 PS JAN 97 An Extension to HTTP: Digest Access Authentication RFC2109 PS FEB 97 HTTP State Management Mechanism RFC2145 I MAY 97 Use and interpretation of HTTP version numbers RFC2227 PS OCT 97 Simple Hit-Metering and Usage-Limiting for HTTP RFC2295 E MAR 98 Transparent Content Negotiation in HTTP RFC2296 E MAR 98 HTTP Remote Variant Selection Algorithm -- RVSA/1.0 RFC2310 E APR 98 The Safe Response Header Field RFC2617 DS JUN 99 HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication RFC2616 DS JUN 99 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1 RFC2965 PS OCT 00 HTTP State Management Mechanism