Subject: compliant proxies found, at last

From: Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 12:33:52 -0600 (MDT)

I would like to share a piece of good news with folks who care about
HTTP: Two HTTP proxies, an open-source RabbIT[1] and a commercial
implementation from Datapower[2], have recently managed to pass all
applicable RFC 2616 MUSTs that we could test. These are the first
compliant HTTP intermediaries we know of.

IIRC, it took both teams almost a year to fix all violations. If you
look at RabbIT and Datapower product descriptions, you will see that
these are real, full-featured content-aware proxies, not just some L4
tunnels that do not care about HTTP. From what I heard, a couple of
core design alternations were required to pass some of the tough test
cases. Now we have a living proof that it is possible to be
feature-reach and HTTP/1.1 compliant!

    Disclaimer: I do realize that passing all Co-Advisor test cases
    does not imply or guarantee formal compliance, even on conditional
    level.  I am sure that there are still bugs to be fixed. No
    testing can guarantee a bug-free implementation. We can never
    prove compliance by testing. When I say "compliant", I mean
    "passes all applicable MUST-level test cases". Call it a marketing
    trick/spin if you wish.

I applaud Patrick McManus (Datapower), Robert Olofsson (RabbIT), and
their development/QA teams on having the dedication and skills
required to support all relevant HTTP/1.1 MUSTs. I believe that their
success is significant, regardless of the marketing spin.

I hope you do not perceive this message as an ad for our test suite. I
tried hard to simply share the good news and praise the good guys :-).

Thank you,

Alex.

[1] http://www.khelekore.org/rabbit/
[2] http://www.datapower.com/