Subject: Ranges

From: "Adrien W. de Croy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 02:53:36 +0000

Just been working on range support.  P5 is great improvement over 2616 
btw, answers a lot of questions.

some nits and queries...

1. 3.1 Range:

Para 4 (p7)

A proxy MAY either discard a Range header field that contains a range 
unit it does not understand or pass it to the next inbound server when 
forwarding the request.

What does "next inbound server" mean?  Range is a request header, 
therefore these should only be going in 1 direction, and that's from 
client to server.  I'd propose

"A proxy MAY discard a Range header field that contains a range unit it 
does not understand".

Para 5 (p7)

"
A server that supports range requests ought to ignore or reject a Range 
header field that consists of more than two overlapping ranges"

does "ought to" mean SHOULD?  How is the rejection envisaged, a 416?

2. If-Range

p5 (v22) doesn't specify what to do if there is an invalid date 
specified (e.g. not a well formed date / fails parsing).  I would 
propose this is a non-match and therefore range processing is 
suppressed.  Shouldn't there be some warning or something if Range 
processing is suppressed for various reasons?  e.g.:

use of weak etag (prohibited)
empty If-Range (ignore?)
bad date

TIA

Cheers

Adrien

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 14:27:14 +0200

On 2013-06-27 04:53, Adrien W. de Croy wrote:
> A proxy MAY either discard a
>     Range header field that contains a range unit it does not understand
>     or pass it to the next inbound server when forwarding the request.
>
>
>
>
>

Agreed.

> A server that supports range requests ought to ignore or reject a
>     Range header field that consists of more than two overlapping ranges"
>

It's definitively not a SHOULD. I think it could be a "MAY" or a "can".

And yes, 416 already mentions this case.

> use of weak etag (prohibited)

We usually do not specify behavior for broken messages, unless it's 
needed for security reasons. Does this case qualify?

Best regards, Julian

---

From: "Adrien W. de Croy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 03:57:22 +0000

Hi Julian

------ Original Message ------
From: "Julian Reschke" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Ranges
>needed for security reasons. Does this case qualify?
not as far as I can tell.

It just seemed to be the missing case compared to the other items that 
were covered e.g. what to do with a weak ETag.

Regards

Adrien