Does anyone know how browsers react if they request an entire file and get a 206 (partial content) response? Do they send additional requests for the remaining data? If so, then perhaps partial content responses could be used to deliver pieces of the file out-of-order?
Perhaps it would be worth talking to the Mozilla people about out-of-order downloads, since BitTorrent faces this problem too. From a quick look at RFC 2616 I get the impression that servers are allowed to send pieces of the file out of order, provided each piece is sent in a separate response (you can't send a multipart/byteranges response to a request for a single range). The question is how gracefully the client will handle the situation... Cheers, Michael
