Network Working Group                                     T. Berners-Lee
Request for Comments: 1945                                       MIT/LCS
Category: Informational                                      R. Fielding
                                                               UC Irvine
                                                              H. Frystyk
                                                                 MIT/LCS
                                                                May 1996


                Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0

Status of This Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This memo
   does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of
   this memo is unlimited.

IESG Note:

   The IESG has concerns about this protocol, and expects this document
   to be replaced relatively soon by a standards track document.

Abstract

   The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level
   protocol with the lightness and speed necessary for distributed,
   collaborative, hypermedia information systems. It is a generic,
   stateless, object-oriented protocol which can be used for many tasks,
   such as name servers and distributed object management systems,
   through extension of its request methods (commands). A feature of
   HTTP is the typing of data representation, allowing systems to be
   built independently of the data being transferred.

   HTTP has been in use by the World-Wide Web global information
   initiative since 1990. This specification reflects common usage of
   the protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.0".

1.  Introduction

1.1  Purpose

   The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level
   protocol with the lightness and speed necessary for distributed,
   collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP has been in use
   by the World-Wide Web global information initiative since 1990. This
   specification reflects common usage of the protocol referred too as
   "HTTP/1.0". This specification describes the features that seem to be
   consistently implemented in most HTTP/1.0 clients and servers. The
   specification is split into two sections. Those features of HTTP for
   which implementations are usually consistent are described in the
   main body of this document. Those features which have few or
   inconsistent implementations are listed in Appendix D.

   Practical information systems require more functionality than simple
   retrieval, including search, front-end update, and annotation. HTTP
   allows an open-ended set of methods to be used to indicate the
   purpose of a request. It builds on the discipline of reference
   provided by the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) [2], as a location
   (URL) [4] or name (URN) [16], for indicating the resource on which a
   method is to be applied. Messages are passed in a format similar to
   that used by Internet Mail [7] and the Multipurpose Internet Mail
   Extensions (MIME) [5].

   HTTP is also used as a generic protocol for communication between
   user agents and proxies/gateways to other Internet protocols, such as
   SMTP [12], NNTP [11], FTP [14], Gopher [1], and WAIS [8], allowing
   basic hypermedia access to resources available from diverse
   applications and simplifying the implementation of user agents.

14. References

   [1]  Anklesaria, F., McCahill, M., Lindner, P., Johnson, D.,
        Torrey, D., and B. Alberti, "The Internet Gopher Protocol: A
        Distributed Document Search and Retrieval Protocol", RFC 1436,
        University of Minnesota, March 1993.

   [2]  Berners-Lee, T., "Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW: A
        Unifying Syntax for the Expression of Names and Addresses of
        Objects on the Network as used in the World-Wide Web",
        RFC 1630, CERN, June 1994.

   [4]  Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., and M. McCahill, "Uniform
        Resource Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, CERN, Xerox PARC,
        University of Minnesota, December 1994.

   [5]  Borenstein, N., and N. Freed, "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
        Extensions) Part One: Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing
        the Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 1521, Bellcore,
        Innosoft, September 1993.

   [7]  Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
        Messages", STD 11, RFC 822, UDEL, August 1982.

   [11] Kantor, B., and P. Lapsley, "Network News Transfer Protocol:
        A Proposed Standard for the Stream-Based Transmission of News",
        RFC 977, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, February 1986.

   [12] Postel, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol." STD 10, RFC 821,
        USC/ISI, August 1982.

   [14] Postel, J., and J. Reynolds, "File Transfer Protocol (FTP)",
        STD 9, RFC 959, USC/ISI, October 1985.

   [16] Sollins, K., and L. Masinter, "Functional Requirements for
        Uniform Resource Names", RFC 1737, MIT/LCS, Xerox Corporation,
        December 1994.