HyperText Transfer Protocol (http)
----------------------------------

 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