Re: holding connections open: a modest proposal

Karl Auerbach (karl@cavebear.com)
Sun, 18 Sep 94 09:29:41 PDT

>Data structures using ASN.1 and the PER are in many ways ideal for
>a high performance HTTP protocol; however they perform a completely
>different role to that of mime types. MIME typing is a notation designed to
>indicate the type of an object carried within an envelope; mime also allows
>a mail message to contain multiple objects through the multipart hack, but this
>is orthogonal to its object typing role.

Just a bit of history -- ASN.1 came from X.409 which was used as the
presentation for the wrapper and contents of the potentially
multi-media X.400 mail system definition.

So it shouldn't be too surprising to find that it is a useful tool for
a high performance HTTP. (And it's indefinite length encoding might
just solve some other problems discussed on the list.)

(Too bad that X.409 was taken into other, in my opinion, inappropriate
contexts, and thus turned into a joke in many peoples's minds.)

--karl--