W3C Architecture Domain HTTP

HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol

News | HTTP Activity | Specs | Software | Talks | Mailing lists | IETF | HTTP Extensions | WebMux | HTTP-NG | Web Characterization | Background

Now that both HTTP extensions and HTTP/1.1 are stable specifications (RFC2616 at that time), W3C has closed the HTTP Activity.

An effort to revise HTTP/1.1 started in 2006, which led to the creation of the IETF httpbis Working Group. Work completed with the publication of RFC 723X (See below)

Nearby you can find

Related Protocols


News,Updates, and Events

See also the HTTP timeline for older events

Specifications, Drafts, Papers and Reports

HTTP Working Group

Related Protocols

HTTP Extension Framework
An extension mechanism for HTTP designed to address the tension between private agreement and public specification and to accommodate extension of HTTP clients and servers by software components
Multiplexing Protocol (MUX)
A draft proposal for introducing asynchronous messaging support at a layer below HTTP
Handling of fragment identifiers in redirected URLs
An Internet Draft with a proposal for an issue that HTTP leaves unspecified.
HTTP-NG - Hypertext Transfer Protocol - Next Generation
a former W3C Activity on reengineering the basic protocol architecture by using modularity, simplicity and layering.

Background

HTTP Sample Software

W3C offers the Jigsaw server written in Java and the libwww client API - both released with a full set of HTTP/1.1 functionality including caching and persistent connections. Please see the W3C open source contributions for more details.

Talks and Presentations

Preliminary HTTP/1.1 Performance Evaluation by Jim Gettys
The HTTP/1.1 performance paper explains the experiments in detail, and was recently submitted for publication. This work shows how you can gain as much as a factor of 10 in number of packets and 2 in times of speed by using HTTP/1.1 pipelining. Earliest results were presented at the IETF meeting in San Jose, December 1996, and more complete results at the W3C Advisory Committee Meeting in England in January.
Overview of new HTTP/1.1 functionality and changes from HTTP/1.0 by Jim Gettys
This presentation gives a good overview of new features. It will be updated occasionally as it is presented. The presentation is also available for Microsoft PowerPoint
PEP - An Extension Mechanism for HTTP by Henrik Frystyk Nielsen and Rohit Khare
This presentation was given at the IETF meeting in Montreal, June 1996.

HTTP Mailing lists

There are several mailing lists that you are welcome to use. As several of them are very high volume then please check out the archives first to see if the topic that you want to bring up in fact already has been discussed. As we try to make as much progress on HTTP as possible it is very important that we can stay focused - even on open mailing lists!

ietf-http-wg@w3.org (Archived at W3C (see also the 1994 to 2002 archives).
The official mailing list of the IETF HTTP working group.
w3c-http@w3.org (Archive)
This is a W3C mailing list dedicated to promote HTTP/1.1 implementation, to gain sufficient experience among W3C Members to support the specification, and ease
development of HTTP/1.1 software and applications. The list is only accessible to W3C members.
www-talk@w3.org (Archive)
This is the primary public mailing list for technical discussion among those developing World Wide Web software. It is explicitly intended for the collaborative design of new systems, software, protocols, and documentation which may be useful to the WWW developer community. General questions from non-developers should go one of the many newsgroups.
www-speed@tipper.oit.unc.edu (Information)
This list is no longer maintained and is not active anymore. Do not post any mails to this address!

See also the information on HTTP-NG

IETF Related Information

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the protocol engineering and development arm of the Internet. The IETF is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual.

Working Groups Related to HTTP

These are the IETF working groups working on HTTP directly related issues:

Paul Hoffman at the Internet Mail Consortium maintains an excellent list of IETF working groups directly related to Internet Mail. The following list are working groups of more distant nature relative to HTTP.

You can also check the full list of IETF working groups.

IETF Meetings

Also check out the IETF meeting page for the latest information. We keep a small list of notes from previous HTTP wg meetings at various IETF meetings:

Los Angeles, CA, USA, March-April1998
Where, how-to, agenda etc.
Washington, DC, USA, December 1997
HTTP-WG notes from the meeting and the complete on-line Procedings
Munich, Germany, 11-15 August 1997
HTTP-WG notes from the meeting and the complete on-line Proceedings
Memphis, TN, 7-11 April 1997
HTTP-WG notes from the meeting and the complete on-line Proceedings
San Jose, CA, 9-13 December 1996
HTTP-WG notes from the meeting and the complete on-line proceedings.
Montreal, Quebec CANADA, 24-28 June 1996
HTTP-WG notes from the meeting

Other Organizations Related to IETF

An unordered list of organizations related to IETF:

Other Areas and Protocols


Yves Lafon
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