RFC 2965 (rfc2965) - Page 2 of 26

HTTP State Management Mechanism

RFC 2965            HTTP State Management Mechanism         October 2000


   Host name (HN) means either the host domain name (HDN) or the numeric
   Internet Protocol (IP) address of a host.  The fully qualified domain
   name is preferred; use of numeric IP addresses is strongly
   discouraged.

   The terms request-host and request-URI refer to the values the client
   would send to the server as, respectively, the host (but not port)
   and abs_path portions of the absoluteURI (http_URL) of the HTTP
   request line.  Note that request-host is a HN.

   The term effective host name is related to host name.  If a host name
   contains no dots, the effective host name is that name with the
   string .local appended to it.  Otherwise the effective host name is
   the same as the host name.  Note that all effective host names
   contain at least one dot.

   The term request-port refers to the port portion of the absoluteURI
   (http_URL) of the HTTP request line.  If the absoluteURI has no
   explicit port, the request-port is the HTTP default, 80.  The
   request-port of a cookie is the request-port of the request in which
   a Set-Cookie2 response header was returned to the user agent.

   Host names can be specified either as an IP address or a HDN string.
   Sometimes we compare one host name with another.  (Such comparisons
   SHALL be case-insensitive.)  Host A's name domain-matches host B's if

      *  their host name strings string-compare equal; or

      * A is a HDN string and has the form NB, where N is a non-empty
         name string, B has the form .B', and B' is a HDN string.  (So,
         x.y.com domain-matches .Y.com but not Y.com.)

   Note that domain-match is not a commutative operation: a.b.c.com
   domain-matches .c.com, but not the reverse.

   The reach R of a host name H is defined as follows:

      *  If

         -  H is the host domain name of a host; and,

         -  H has the form A.B; and

         -  A has no embedded (that is, interior) dots; and

         -  B has at least one embedded dot, or B is the string "local".
            then the reach of H is .B.




Kristol & Montulli          Standards Track