Subject: Re: draft-ietf-httpbis-p5-range-21, "3.2 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable"

From: Yves Lafon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 05:46:15 -0500 (EST)

On Wed, 24 Oct 2012, Adrien W. de Croy wrote:

> I've always considered multipart/byteranges to be less than optimal design 
> for the problem.
It might be useful for some video containers that contains significant 
information at the beginning and the end (but it is bad design).

> A server should be able to send the byte ranges coalesced in a single message 
> body, since it advertised the ranges coming back it's possible to unpick it, 
> and doesn't then require the part separators etc.

A server can also decide to support ranges but not support multiple ranges 
requests.

> that way you don't need to overload the Content-Type which then removes your 
> ability to transfer the actual content type (although presumably this has 
> been communicated earlier).

Strong +1 ot the pain of having th crack the multipart envelope to find 
out the real CT.

> Does anyone actually use multiple ranges?

The main question is:
Should multipart/byteranges (and multiple ranges requests) be deprecated?

> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "Zhong Yu" <[email-masked]>
> To: "Julian Reschke" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
> Sent: 25/10/2012 4:52:03 a.m.
> Subject: Re: draft-ietf-httpbis-p5-range-21, "3.2 416 Requested Range Not 
> Satisfiable"
>> Wouldn't "Content-Type: multipart/byteranges" cause confusions if it's
>> used anywhere other than in a 206 response?
>> 
>> Suppose a representation itself has the content type of 
>> "multipart/byteranges"
>>
>>   Get /slivers HTTP/1.1
>> 
>>
>>   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
>>   Content-Type: multipart/byteranges
>> 
>> That's pretty confusing for observers. Even more confusingly
>>
>>   Get/slivers HTTP/1.1
>>   Range: bytes=0-499
>> 
>>
>>   HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
>>   Content-Type: multipart/byteranges
>>   Content-Range: bytes 0-499/1234
>> 
>> Maybe we should strongly discourage the use of multipart/byteranges in
>> any application except in a HTTP 206 response.
>> 
>> Zhong Yu
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 7:21 AM, Julian Reschke <[email-masked]> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> <http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-httpbis-p5-range-21.html#status.416>:
>>> 
>>> "When this status code is returned for a byte-range request, the response
>>> SHOULD include a Content-Range header field specifying the current length 
>>> of
>>> the representation (see Section 5.2). This response MUST NOT use the
>>> multipart/byteranges content-type. For example,"
>>> 
>>> What is this "MUST NOT" about? Are there clients that will ignore the 
>>> status
>>> code and assume success if they see the expected content-type?
>>> 
>>> Best regards, Julian
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>
>
>

-- 
Baroula que barouleras, au tiéu toujou t'entourneras.

         ~~Yves