Re: Claification requested in Host:

Dah Ming Chiu[SMTP:dahming.chiu@Eng.Sun.COM] (via jg@zorch.w3.org) wrote:
  > Here is a HTTP 1.1 question for you.  According to the spec 14.23, the
  > Host field is defined as
  > 	"Host" ":" host [ ":" port ]
  > where (in 3.2.2), host is defined as
  > 	<a legal Internet host ___domain name or IP address...>
  > 
  > The question is whether a single component name consititute a "legal"
  > Internet host ___domain name?  For example, a user types in "foo" at his
  > browser, which runs in ___domain "xyz.com".  The browser is smart enough
  > to assume the use wants to talk to "foo.xyz.com", and hence gets the
  > correct IP address.  But in the HTTP request, the browser sends
  > 	Host : foo
  > Does this browser conform to HTTP 1.1?
  > 
  > If the answer is yes, there may be a problem with HTTP 1.1, since the
  > ambiguous host name is not sufficient for virtual host implementation.
  > 
  > I suspect the answer is no, in which case that browser is not conformant.
  > Could make this point clear in your spec?

RFC 2068 also says:
	The Host field value MUST represent the network ___location of the
	origin server or gateway given by the original URL.

Therefore, my take on this is that, if the URL was
	http://foo/bar/bletch
then
	Host: foo
is correct.  If we're in ___domain xyz.com, I could live with seeing
	Host: foo.xyz.com
instead.  What would not be acceptable, I think, is if "foo" is
an alias for abc(.xyz.com), and we get
	Host: abc.xyz.com
or
	Host: abc

That would defeat the whole point of Host, to allow virtual hosts.

Dave Kristol

Received on Friday, 14 February 1997 11:20:45 UTC