RFC 2965 (rfc2965) - Page 1 of 26

HTTP State Management Mechanism

Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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Network Working Group                                         D. Kristol
Request for Comments: 2965        Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies
Obsoletes: 2109                                              L. Montulli
Category: Standards Track                             Epinions.com, Inc.
                                                            October 2000


                    HTTP State Management Mechanism

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.

IESG Note

   The IESG notes that this mechanism makes use of the .local top-level
   domain (TLD) internally when handling host names that don't contain
   any dots, and that this mechanism might not work in the expected way
   should an actual .local TLD ever be registered.

Abstract

   This document specifies a way to create a stateful session with
   Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests and responses.  It
   describes three new headers, Cookie, Cookie2, and Set-Cookie2, which
   carry state information between participating origin servers and user
   agents.  The method described here differs from Netscape's Cookie
   proposal [Netscape], but it can interoperate with HTTP/1.0 user
   agents that use Netscape's method.  (See the HISTORICAL section.)

   This document reflects implementation experience with RFC 2109 and
   obsoletes it.

1.  TERMINOLOGY

   The terms user agent, client, server, proxy, origin server, and
   http_URL have the same meaning as in the HTTP/1.1 specification
   [RFC 2616].  The terms abs_path and absoluteURI have the same meaning
   as in the URI Syntax specification [RFC 2396].




Kristol & Montulli          Standards Track
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