Subject: Thanks Re Caching Problem

From: "Tim Coates" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 08:05:59 +1100

Thanks to those who provided me with information about the caching problem
with the proxy server...

We were running a number of tests using Netscape, MSIE V5, Opera, Neoplanet
browsers. We knew that the proxy server was dowgrading the response. Based
on the references provided by Jeff and other document Q222064 ("Pragma:
no-cache" Tag May Not Prevent Pages from Being Cached) and Q234067 (Prevent
Caching in Internet Explorer) (from MS Support) explain why the web page was
still being cached by the browser. The strange thing was the pages were not
being cached by Netscape - even with HTTP/1.0. A problem still exists at the
browser end however.

From a security end we know that HTTP/1.0 has flaws (especially when you
introduce a web browser), but it raises the question of how many proxy
server are there which only implement HTTP/1.0. All it seems to takes is a
single proxy server for a response to be downgraded, and for the browser to
receive that downgraded response and (correctly?) ignore any settings that
are not associated with the protocol identifier in the response - such as
Cache-Control headers.

Regards,
Tim C.