On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 01:30:09PM +0100, Michael Rogers wrote: > 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?
Hrrm. That's actually quite a good idea. I've mailed a Person Who Would Know, but from the RFC it's unlikely that browsers will do the above. > > 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... You can't have a 206 in response to a request that didn't ask for a byterange: "10.2.7 206 Partial Content The server has fulfilled the partial GET request for the resource. The request MUST have included a Range header field (section 14.35) indicating the desired range, and MAY have included an If-Range header field (section 14.27) to make the request conditional." Having said that, it's just possible that it would be easy to change it to accomodate e.g. bittorrent proxies... > > Cheers, > Michael -- Matthew J Toseland - toad at amphibian.dyndns.org Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: <https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/devl/attachments/20050901/25167e17/attachment.pgp>
