Network Working Group M. Nottingham
Internet-Draft Rackspace
Updates: 2616 (if approved) R. Fielding
Intended status: Standards Track Adobe
Expires: August 7, 2012 February 4, 2012
Additional HTTP Status Codes
draft-nottingham-http-new-status-04
Abstract
This document specifies additional HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
status codes for a variety of common situations.
Editorial Note (To be removed by RFC Editor before publication)
Distribution of this document is unlimited. Although this is not a
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Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. 428 Precondition Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. 429 Too Many Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. 431 Request Header Fields Too Large . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. 511 Network Authentication Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Appendix B. Issues Raised by Captive Portals . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
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1. Introduction
This document specifies additional HTTP [RFC2616] status codes for a
variety of common situations, to improve interoperability and avoid
confusion when other, less precise status codes are used.
Note that these status codes are optional; servers cannot be required
to support them. However, because clients will treat unknown status
codes as a generic error of the same class (e.g., 499 is treated as
400 if it is not recognized), they can be safely deployed by existing
servers (see [RFC2616] Section 6.1.1 for more information).
2. Requirements
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
3. 428 Precondition Required
The 428 status code indicates that the origin server requires the
request to be conditional.
Its typical use is to avoid the "lost update" problem, where a client
GETs a resource's state, modifies it, and PUTs it back to the server,
when meanwhile a third party has modified the state on the server,
leading to a conflict. By requiring requests to be conditional, the
server can assure that clients are working with the correct copies.
Responses using this status code SHOULD explain how to resubmit the
request successfully. For example:
HTTP/1.1 428 Precondition Required
Content-Type: text/html
<html>
<head>
<title>Precondition Required</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Precondition Required</h1>
<p>This request is required to be conditional;
try using "If-Match".</p>
</body>
</html>
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Responses with the 428 status code MUST NOT be stored by a cache.
4. 429 Too Many Requests
The 429 status code indicates that the user has sent too many
requests in a given amount of time ("rate limiting").
The response representations SHOULD include details explaining the
condition, and MAY include a Retry-After header indicating how long
to wait before making a new request.
For example:
HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Content-Type: text/html
Retry-After: 3600
<html>
<head>
<title>Too Many Requests</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Too Many Requests</h1>
<p>I only allow 50 requests per hour to this Web site per
logged in user. Try again soon.</p>
</body>
</html>
Note that this specification does not define how the origin server
identifies the user, nor how it counts requests. For example, an
origin server that is limiting request rates can do so based upon
counts of requests on a per-resource basis, across the entire server,
or even among a set of servers. Likewise, it might identify the user
by its authentication credentials, or a stateful cookie.
Responses with the 429 status code MUST NOT be stored by a cache.
5. 431 Request Header Fields Too Large
The 431 status code indicates that the server is unwilling to process
the request because its header fields are too large. The request MAY
be resubmitted after reducing the size of the request header fields.
It can be used both when the set of request header fields in total
are too large, and when a single header field is at fault. In the
latter case, the response representation SHOULD specify which header
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field was too large.
For example:
HTTP/1.1 431 Request Header Fields Too Large
Content-Type: text/html
<html>
<head>
<title>Request Header Fields Too Large</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Request Header Fields Too Large</h1>
<p>The "Example" header was too large.</p>
</body>
</html>
Responses with the 431 status code MUST NOT be stored by a cache.
6. 511 Network Authentication Required
The 511 status code indicates that the client needs to authenticate
to gain network access.
The response representation SHOULD contain a link to a resource that
allows the user to submit credentials (e.g. with a HTML form).
Note that the 511 response SHOULD NOT contain a challenge or the
login interface itself, because browsers would show the login
interface as being associated with the originally requested URL,
which may cause confusion.
The 511 status SHOULD NOT be generated by origin servers; it is
intended for use by intercepting proxies that are interposed as a
means of controlling access to the network.
Responses with the 511 status code MUST NOT be stored by a cache.
6.1. The 511 Status Code and Captive Portals
The 511 status code is designed to mitigate problems caused by
"captive portals" to software (especially non-browser agents) that is
expecting a response from the server that a request was made to, not
the intervening network infrastructure. It is not intended to
encouraged deployment of captive portals, only to limit the damage
caused by them.
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A network operator wishing to require some authentication, acceptance
of terms or other user interaction before granting access usually
does so by identifing clients who have not done so ("unknown
clients") using their MAC addresses.
Unknown clients then have all traffic blocked, except for that on TCP
port 80, which is sent to a HTTP server (the "login server")
dedicated to "logging in" unknown clients, and of course traffic to
the login server itself.
For example, a user agent might connect to a network and make the
following HTTP request on TCP port 80:
GET /index.htm HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Upon receiving such a request, the login server would generate a 511
response:
HTTP/1.1 511 Network Authentication Required
Content-Type: text/html
<html>
<head>
<title>Network Authentication Required</title>
<meta http-equiv="refresh"
content="0; url=https://login.example.net/">
</head>
<body>
<p>You need to <a href="https://login.example.net/">
authenticate with the local network</a> in order to gain
access.</p>
</body>
</html>
Here, the 511 status code assures that non-browser clients will not
interpret the response as being from the origin server, and the META
HTML element redirects the user agent to the login server.
7. Security Considerations
7.1. 428 Precondition Required
The 428 status code is optional; clients cannot rely upon its use to
prevent "lost update" conflicts.
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7.2. 429 Too Many Requests
When a server is under attack or just receiving a very large number
of requests from a single party, responding to each with a 429 status
code will consume resources.
Therefore, servers are not required to use the 429 status code; when
limiting resource usage, it may be more appropriate to just drop
connections, or take other steps.
7.3. 431 Request Header Fields Too Large
Servers are not required to use the 431 status code; when under
attack, it may be more appropriate to just drop connections, or take
other steps.
7.4. 511 Network Authentication Required
In common use, a response carrying the 511 status code will not come
from the origin server indicated in the request's URL. This presents
many security issues; e.g., an attacking intermediary may be
inserting cookies into the original domain's name space, may be
observing cookies or HTTP authentication credentials sent from the
user agent, and so on.
However, these risks are not unique to the 511 status code; in other
words, a captive portal that is not using this status code introduces
the same issues.
Also, note that captive portals using this status code on an SSL or
TLS connection (commonly, port 443) will generate a certificate error
on the client.
8. IANA Considerations
The HTTP Status Codes Registry should be updated with the following
entries:
o Code: 428
o Description: Precondition Required
o Specification: [ this document ]
o Code: 429
o Description: Too Many Requests
o Specification: [ this document ]
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o Code: 431
o Description: Request Header Fields Too Large
o Specification: [ this document ]
o Code: 511
o Description: Network Authentication Required
o Specification: [ this document ]
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
9.2. Informative References
[RFC4791] Daboo, C., Desruisseaux, B., and L. Dusseault,
"Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV)", RFC 4791,
March 2007.
[RFC4918] Dusseault, L., "HTTP Extensions for Web Distributed
Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV)", RFC 4918, June 2007.
URIs
[1] <mailto:ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
[2] <mailto:ietf-http-wg-request@w3.org?subject=subscribe>
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jan Algermissen and Julian Reschke for their suggestions
and feedback.
Appendix B. Issues Raised by Captive Portals
Since clients cannot differentiate between a portal's response and
that of the HTTP server that they intended to communicate with, a
number of issues arise. The 511 status code is intended to help
mitigate some of them.
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One example is the "favicon.ico"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon> commonly used by browsers to
identify the site being accessed. If the favicon for a given site is
fetched from a captive portal instead of the intended site (e.g.,
because the user is unauthenticated), it will often "stick" in the
browser's cache (most implementations cache favicons aggressively)
beyond the portal session, so that it seems as if the portal's
favicon has "taken over" the legitimate site.
Another browser-based issue comes about when P3P
<http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/> is supported. Depending on how it is
implemented, it's possible a browser might interpret a portal's
response for the p3p.xml file as the server's, resulting in the
privacy policy (or lack thereof) advertised by the portal being
interpreted as applying to the intended site. Other Web-based
protocols such as WebFinger
<http://code.google.com/p/webfinger/wiki/WebFingerProtocol>, CORS
<http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/> and OAuth
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-v2> may also be
vulnerable to such issues.
Although HTTP is most widely used with Web browsers, a growing number
of non-browsing applications use it as a substrate protocol. For
example, WebDAV [RFC4918] and CalDAV [RFC4791] both use HTTP as the
basis (for remote authoring and calendaring, respectively). Using
these applications from behind a captive portal can result in
spurious errors being presented to the user, and might result in
content corruption, in extreme cases.
Similarly, other non-browser applications using HTTP can be affected
as well; e.g., widgets <http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/>, software
updates, and other specialised software such as Twitter clients and
the iTunes Music Store.
It should be noted that it's sometimes believed that using HTTP
redirection to direct traffic to the portal addresses these issues.
However, since many of these uses "follow" redirects, this is not a
good solution.
Authors' Addresses
Mark Nottingham
Rackspace
Email: mnot@mnot.net
URI: http://www.mnot.net/
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Roy T. Fielding
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Ave
San Jose, CA 95110
USA
Email: fielding@gbiv.com
URI: http://roy.gbiv.com/
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