HyperText Transfer Protocol (http)
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Charter
Last Modified: 10/11/2000
Current Status: Concluded Working Group
Chair(s):
L Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
Applications Area Director(s):
Ned Freed <ned.freed@mrochek.com>
Patrik Faltstrom <paf@cisco.com>
Applications Area Advisor:
Patrik Faltstrom <paf@cisco.com>
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