IETF HTTP-NG BOF Agenda

Chicago, IL, USA, 23-28 August 1998

Purpose | Status | Working Drafts | Agenda | Mailing List | Background

Read the minutes from the meeting!

The HTTP-NG proposal which is the basis for this HTTP-NG BOF at the IETF Chicago Meeting, August 23-28, is to factor HTTP into three layers, to obtain the well-known benefits of modularity in general and, in particular, better structure the large and growing family of uses of HTTP and HTTP-like protocols:

• The lowest layer is a transport abstraction that accommodates a variety of stacks of transport primitives and transport transformers (filters); a particularly interesting transport filter is the webmux, which is intended to provide a better impedence match between TCP and the transactional nature of the middle layer.
• The middle layer is an efficient wire protocol that brings the benefits of interface technology into the Web.
• The highest layer is an expression of the Web as an application of the lower two layers.

We expect this three-layer structure will bring many benefits to the Web, including easier evolution of the protocol standard, interface technology that would facilitate Web automation, easier application building, and so on.

Purpose of BOF

The purpose of the BOF is twofold:

1. to share the experiences that we have gained in the W3C HTTP-NG Project over the last year in working with a prototype of a new model for HTTP based on a distributed object architecture with Internet constraints in mind; and
2. to gauge the interest in moving the HTTP-NG protocol design work to the IETF and to initiate work on WebMux, the HTTP-NG wire protocol as well as mapping HTTP/1.1 features into this new framework. The goal is to turn the initial set of rough drafts into robust standards track specifications.

Current Status

We have currently an initial set of Working Drafts that describe the proposed HTTP-NG architecture and a rough prototype which implements most of these drafts. We plan to have some real performance measurements by the time of the BOF based on Web data produced by the W3C Web Characterizations Group.

We feel that the time is right to move forward with the HTTP-NG work and directly involve the Web community and the Internet community in general and that there is no question that this should happen within the IETF.

Working Drafts and Notes

Here is the list of current drafts to be discussed at the BOF:

• HTTP-ng Architectural Model (draft-frystyk-httpng-arch-00.txt), Internet Draft, August 1, 1998
• HTTP-ng Web Interfaces (draft-larner-nginterfaces-00.txt), Internet Draft, August 1, 1998
• HTTP-ng Binary Wire Protocol (draft-janssen-httpng-wire-00.txt), Internet Draft, August 1, 1998
• WebMUX Protocol Specification (draft-gettys-webmux-00.txt), Internet Draft, August 1, 1998
• Design of HTTP-ng Testbed, W3C Note, 10 July 1998
• Short- and Long-Term Goals for the HTTP-NG Project, W3C Note, 27 March 1998

Agenda

• Welcome and discussion of agenda (Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, 10 min)
• Overview of HTTP-NG Short- and Longterm goals and how they can be evaluated (Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, 10 min)
• Overview of Proposed Architecture (Bill Janssen, 10 min)
  • The WebMux protocol (Jim Gettys, 10 min)
  • The HTTP-NG Wire protocol (Bill Janssen, 10 min)
  • Initial set of HTTP/1.x style interfaces for HTTP-NG (Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, 10 min)
• Discussion of proposed tasks to work on:
  • WebMux (Jim Gettys, 20 min)
  • HTTP-NG Wire Protocol (Bill Janssen, 20 min)
  • HTTP-NG Web Interfaces (Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, 20 min)
• Adjourn

Mailing List

The <www-http-ng-comments@w3.org> mailing list and archives are available for discussions of the HTTP-NG Project. You MUST be subscribed in order to post to this mailing list, see the Mailing list administrativia for details.

Background Information

Check the HTTP-NG overview for more information