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1. Introduction

1.1 Purpose

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol with the lightness and speed necessary for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP has been in use by the World-Wide Web global information initiative since 1990. This specification reflects preferred usage of the protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.0". This specification does not necessarily reflect the "current practice" of any single HTTP server or client implementation. It does, however, seek to remain compatible with existing implementations wherever possible, and should be considered the reference for future implementations of HTTP/1.0.

Practical information systems require more functionality than simple retrieval, including search, front-end update, and annotation. HTTP/1.0 allows an open-ended set of methods to be used to indicate the purpose of a request. It builds on the discipline of reference provided by the Universal Resource Identifier (URI) [3], as a location (URL) [5] or name (URN), for indicating the resource on which a method is to be applied. Messages are passed in a format similar to that used by Internet Mail [8] and the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) [6].

HTTP/1.0 is also used for communication between user agents and various gateways, allowing hypermedia access to existing Internet protocols like SMTP [14], NNTP [12], FTP [16], Gopher [2], and WAIS [9]. HTTP/1.0 is designed to allow such gateways, via proxy servers, without any loss of the data conveyed by those earlier protocols.

T. Berners-Lee, R. T. Fielding, H. Frystyk Nielsen - 12 MAR 95

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