Subject: WGLC p1: proxy handling of a really bad Content-Length

From: Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 00:43:14 -0600

Hello,

    When talking about dealing with malformed responses, HTTPbis p1
Section 3.3.3 says:

> the proxy MUST discard the received response, send a 502 (Bad
> Gateway) status code as its downstream response, and then close the
> connection.

Which connection MUST the proxy close: upstream or downstream? If you
guessed downstream because the connection must be closed only _after_
the 502 downstream response is sent, you guessed wrong :-).

The proxy MUST close the upstream connection and it may do that
immediately, without waiting for the 502 response to be sent on the
downstream connection. This was discussed around 2011/11/28, and I think
Mark agreed that a fix is needed but the text was never changed.

Also, the current wording suggests sending "status code" as a response,
which is not the intent, of course.

Suggested fix:

  the proxy MUST close the upstream connection, discard the received
  response, and send a 502 (Bad Gateway) response downstream.

Thank you,

Alex.