Re: Maintaining HTTP connections...

Christian L. Mogensen (mogens@CS.Stanford.EDU)
Thu, 28 Jul 1994 02:48:55 +0200

Paul Everitt writes:

> On Thu, 28 Jul 1994, Christian L. Mogensen wrote:

> > This is one of the good reasons for having multipart messages:
> > Problems with it are:
> > no browsers support it
> > servers don't support it
> > You can't send multiple requests at once.

> Yes, it is hard to move a browser base. Something I haven't seen
> discussed is the proxy aspect. Although proxy servers constitute a very
> small portion of the GETs, they likewise constitute a more-easily
> upgraded installed base. And with the developments in the proxy
> community, the percentage of traffic from them will go up.

> So, why not think in terms of applying these ideas to server-server
> transactions? Seems to make things much easier to implement.

Interesting take - we are currently hacking away at Mosaic (and cursing
the code) and see the problems in trying to move clients on to this.
At the same time the server hacker (me) is breezing through it - no
motif widgets, no hassles etc.

Also: clients will not support a feature until servers do - otherwise
it is useless. I think this has been NCSA's strength - since they have
both the client and server sides wrapped up.

How common are proxies (having never seen one myself)?

Christian