19.5 Changes from HTTP/1.0

This section summarizes major differences between versions HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1.

19.5.1 Changes to Simplify Multi-homed Web Servers and Conserve IP Addresses

Older HTTP/1.0 clients assumed a one-to-one relationship of IP addresses and servers; there was no other established mechanism for distinguishing the intended server of a request than the IP address to which that request was directed. The changes outlined above will allow the Internet, once older HTTP clients are no longer common, to support multiple Web sites from a single IP address, greatly simplifying large operational Web servers, where allocation of many IP addresses to a single host has created serious problems. The Internet will also be able to recover the IP addresses that have been allocated for the sole purpose of allowing special-purpose domain names to be used in root-level HTTP URLs. Given the rate of growth of the Web, and the number of servers already deployed, it is extremely important that all implementations of HTTP (including updates to existing HTTP/1.0 applications) correctly implement these requirements:

• Both clients and servers MUST support the Host request-header.

• Host request-headers are required in HTTP/1.1 requests.

• Servers MUST report a 400 (Bad Request) error if an HTTP/1.1 request does not include a Host request-header.

• Servers MUST accept absolute URIs.