Technical Summary
Traditional HTTP range semantics allow the request of ranges with
fixed starting points but undefined ending points. However, responses
must not be open ended in this way - they can indicate that the full
representation is open ended but the range response itself must be
finitely defined. The draft discusses this in section 2.2
This document defines a backwards compatible mechanism for streaming
open ended response ranges (i.e. ranges that start at a fixed point
but are appended to and transferred after the response headers have
been generated).
It is applicable to all versions of HTTP.
Working Group Summary
There was consistent, but low level, interest from the working group
in this document. It was discussed in several dozen email messages and
at least 3 times in face to face sessions with concrete discussion
each time. The initial mechanism was agreed to quickly and much of the
discussion focused around use cases, examples, and whether or not
Experimental is the right status for the document.
There is no controversy around this document within the working group.
Document Quality
Participation in the document's review and development was
acceptable: involving about 10 individuals representing browsers,
servers, and intermediaries. The Working Group Last Call reassured the
chairs that there was sufficient broad based interest to move the
document forward.
There is at least one implementation of this on a large content
provider currently deployed.
Personnel
Patrick McManus is the document shepherd; Alexey Melnikov is the
responsible Area Director.