Now that both HTTP extensions and HTTP/1.1 are stable specifications ( RFC2616 at that time), W3C has closed the HTTP Activity.

An effort to revise HTTP/1.1 started in 2006, which led to the creation of the IETF httpbis Working Group. Work completed with the publication of RFC 723X (See below)

Nearby you can find

• The HTTP Performance Overview for the speed you're longing for...
• The HTTP/1.1 Implementor's Forum for discussions of HTTP/1.1 implementation tricks as well as interoperability work

Related Protocols

• The HTTP Extension Framework Internet Draft and discussions
• WebMux - a simple multiplexing protocol
• W3C HTTP-NG activity and HTTP-NG Overview

Specifications, Drafts, Papers and Reports

HTTP Working Group

• List of all HTTP RFCs
  • RFC 2616: Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1
  • RFC 2617: HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication
• Previous HTTP specifications and drafts . If you are looking for previous drafts then have a look at the HTTP draft specification change history
• The IETF HTTP working group list of Internet drafts and RFCs
• The Distributed Authoring and Versioning working group maintains a list of their drafts
• David M. Kristol maintains a page on HTTP State Management - a.k.a. cookies
• Koen Holtman maintains a page on transparent HTTP content negotiation

Related Protocols

An extension mechanism for HTTP designed to address the tension between private agreement and public specification and to accommodate extension of HTTP clients and servers by software components

A draft proposal for introducing asynchronous messaging support at a layer below HTTP

Handling of fragment identifiers in redirected URLs An Internet Draft with a proposal for an issue that HTTP leaves unspecified.

a former W3C Activity on reengineering the basic protocol architecture by using modularity, simplicity and layering.

Background

• Overview of Time- What is the state of time on the Internet?
• Interesting Papers and MUST reads ! A collection of papers from work shops, conferences etc.
• Compression and HTTP - also check out the comprehensive compression overview
• Classic HTTP Documents - read how it all started

Talks and Presentations

The HTTP/1.1 performance paper explains the experiments in detail, and was recently submitted for publication. This work shows how you can gain as much as a factor of 10 in number of packets and 2 in times of speed by using HTTP/1.1 pipelining. Earliest results were presented at the IETF meeting in San Jose, December 1996, and more complete results at the W3C Advisory Committee Meeting in England in January.

This presentation gives a good overview of new features. It will be updated occasionally as it is presented. The presentation is also available for Microsoft PowerPoint

This presentation was given at the IETF meeting in Montreal, June 1996.

IETF Related Information

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the protocol engineering and development arm of the Internet. The IETF is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual.

• Current Internet Drafts (IDs)
• Request for Comments (RFCs) and another very nice interface to RFCs
• Information on Internet Official Protocol Standards and
• Internet Standards Process about the IETF standards process.

Working Groups Related to HTTP

These are the IETF working groups working on HTTP directly related issues:

• Content Negotiation (conneg) IETF Working Group with mailing list and archives
• HTTP wg (http) with mailing list and archives
• WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning (webdav) with mailing list and archives
• Web Transaction Security wg (wts)

Paul Hoffman at the Internet Mail Consortium maintains an excellent list of IETF working groups directly related to Internet Mail . The following list are working groups of more distant nature relative to HTTP.

• Application Configuration Access Protocol wg (acap)
• Internet Printing Protocol (ipp)
• Multiparty Multimedia Session Control (mmusic)
• TCP Implementation (tcpimpl)

You can also check the full list of IETF working groups.

IETF Meetings

Also check out the IETF meeting page for the latest information. We keep a small list of notes from previous HTTP wg meetings at various IETF meetings:

Los Angeles, CA, USA, March-April 1998

Where, how-to, agenda etc.

Washington, DC, USA, December 1997

HTTP-WG notes from the meeting and the complete on-line Procedings

Munich, Germany, 11-15 August 1997

HTTP-WG notes from the meeting and the complete on-line Procedings

Memphis, TN, 7-11 April 1997

HTTP-WG notes from the meeting and the complete on-line Procedings

San Jose, CA, 9-13 December 1996

HTTP-WG notes from the meeting and the complete on-line Procedings

Montreal, Quebec CANADA, 24-28 June 1996

HTTP-WG notes from the meeting

Other Organizations Related to IETF

• The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) which consists of the IETF Area directors together with the Chair of the IETF.
• The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is a composed of a number of focused, long-term, small Research Groups. These groups work on topics related to Internet protocols, applications, architecture and technology.
• The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is a body of the Internet Society responsible for overall architectural considerations in the Internet.
• The Internet Society (ISOC) is a non-governmental International organization for global cooperation and coordination for the Internet and its internetworking technologies and applications.
• The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the central coordinator for the assignment of unique parameter values for Internet protocols