Folks, During some testing recently, we discovered an implementation which barfed if it received a request with a URI whose user name was longer than some fairly small number - 64 bytes. As a first pass, such a limitation might seem a reasonable thing to do. After all, usernames are generally short, right? Wrong. One of the classic blunders in protocol engineering is building limits into namespace sizes because of a perceived limitation in use. We are already seeing discussions of embedding other URLs within the user portion of the URI; the explosion in web sites is causing domain name sizes to increase. Expect this trend to continue. Thus, I would STRONGLY recommend that implementors not introduce artificial limits into the size of any name related element (user portion, hostname, URL parameters, branch ID of Via header, etc.). Flexible management of spaces like these are really important. Thanks, Jonathan R. -- Jonathan D. Rosenberg 72 Eagle Rock Ave. Chief Scientist First Floor dynamicsoft East Hanover, NJ 07936 [EMAIL PROTECTED] FAX: (973) 952-5050 http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~jdrosen PHONE: (732) 741-7244 http://www.dynamicsoft.com
