PEP - an Extension Mechanism for HTTP

(IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress". To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). Frystyk, et al [Page 2] The contribution of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) staff time to the HTTP working group is part of the W3C HTTP Activity. Abstract HTTP is used increasingly in applications that need more facilities than the standard version of the protocol provides, ranging from distributed authoring, collaboration, and printing, to various remote procedure call mechanisms. The Protocol Extension Protocol (PEP) is an extension mechanism designed to address the tension between private agreement and public specification and to accommodate extension of applications such as HTTP clients, servers, and proxies. The PEP mechanism is designed to associate each extension with a URI[2], and use a few new RFC 822[1] derived header fields to carry the extension identifier and related information between the parties involved in an extended transaction. This document defines PEP and describes the interactions between PEP and HTTP/1.1[7]. PEP is intended to be compatible with HTTP/1.0[5] inasmuch as HTTP/1.1 is compatible with HTTP/1.0 (see [7], section 19.7). It is proposed that the PEP extension mechanism be included in future versions of HTTP. The PEP extension mechanism may be applicable to other information exchange not mentioned in this document. It is recommended that readers get acquainted with section 1.4 for a suggested reading of this specification and a list of sections specific for HTTP based applications.