[6868] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: A few semantic points for HTTP/1.0 draft
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lou Montulli)
Tue Nov 29 18:35:25 1994
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 23:54:46 +0100
Errors-To: listmaster@www0.cern.ch
Reply-To: montulli@strumpet.mcom.com
From: "Lou Montulli" <montulli@strumpet.mcom.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>
On Nov 29, 3:34pm, hallam@axal04.cern.ch wrote:
> Subject: RE: A few semantic points for HTTP/1.0 draft
> >Current client support for 503 is minimal. As an example, NetScape's
> >response to a 503 error is to begin repeatedly resending the client's
> >request until it is satisfied or the client times out. If the server is
> >moderately busy, the client may be quickly serviced without impacting
> >performance from the user's or server's perspective. If the server is
> >heavily overloaded, a rapid, repeated resubmission of the request will only
> >make the problem worse.
>
I was told that 503 meant server busy and that the client should continue
to retry after a slight delay until it could get through. Maybe I was
mis-informed? For now I will remove the retry behavior so that Netscape
fails gracefully when a 503 is encountered and not retry again. Whenever
someone finally figures out what to do in the 503 case I'll reimplement
the new solution.
--
Lou Montulli http://www.mcom.com/people/montulli/
Netscape Communications Corp.
