RFC 2817 (rfc2817) - Page 1 of 13

Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1

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Network Working Group                                           R. Khare
Request for Comments: 2817                     4K Associates / UC Irvine
Updates: 2616                                                S. Lawrence
Category: Standards Track                          Agranat Systems, Inc.
                                                                May 2000


                    Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1.1

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This memo explains how to use the Upgrade mechanism in HTTP/1.1 to
   initiate Transport Layer Security (TLS) over an existing TCP
   connection. This allows unsecured and secured HTTP traffic to share
   the same well known port (in this case, http: at 80 rather than
   https: at 443). It also enables "virtual hosting", so a single HTTP +
   TLS server can disambiguate traffic intended for several hostnames at
   a single IP address.

   Since HTTP/1.1 [1] defines Upgrade as a hop-by-hop mechanism, this
   memo also documents the HTTP CONNECT method for establishing end-to-
   end tunnels across HTTP proxies. Finally, this memo establishes new
   IANA registries for public HTTP status codes, as well as public or
   private Upgrade product tokens.

   This memo does NOT affect the current definition of the 'https' URI
   scheme, which already defines a separate namespace
   (http://example.org/ and https://example.org/ are not equivalent).











Khare & Lawrence            Standards Track
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