IETF Accepts W3C's HTTP 1.1 as Draft Standard

Computergram International, July 12, 1999

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)'s HTTP 1.1 has been approved as a Draft Standard by the Steering Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). HTTP 1.1 has been designed to replace the original version of HTTP written by Tim Berners-Lee, Henrick Frystyk Nielsen of the W3C and Roy Fielding of UC Irvine. While HTTP 1.0 has been an undeniable success, it has performance issues that, coupled with the growth in web use, have led to load problems on the internet.

Roy Fielding first proposed HTTP 1.1 in a bid to provide higher performance for end-users while preserving the integrity and stability of the internet. New features include persistent connections, pipelining, caching and IP address preservation. There's also an HTTP Digest Authentication mechanism, which can authenticate a user to an HTTP server without exposing the user's password to eavesdroppers.

The IETF's recognition of it as a draft standard means HTTP 1.1 is stable and has multiple interoperable implementations and that all known technical issues in the specification have been resolved. Expect a final specification any day now.