Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-mogul-http-digest-01.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 17:56:05 -0500

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

	Title		: Instance Digests in HTTP
	Author(s)	: J. Mogul, A. van Hoff
	Filename	: draft-mogul-http-digest-01.txt
	Pages		: 12
	Date		: 22-Feb-99
	
        HTTP/1.1 defines a Content-MD5 header that allows a server
        to include a digest of the response body.  However, this is
        specifically defined to cover the body of the actual
        message, not the contents of the full file (which might be
        quite different, if the response is a Content-Range, or
        uses a delta encoding).  Also, the Content-MD5 is limited
        to one specific digest algorithm; other algorithms, such as
        SHA-1, may be more appropriate in some circumstances.
        Finally, HTTP/1.1 provides no explicit mechanism by which a
        client may request a digest.  This document proposes HTTP
        extensions that solve these problems.

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