RFC - 3229

Delta encoding in HTTP

Original:	ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc3229.txt
Authors:	J. Mogul [Compaq WRL], B. Krishnamurthy [AT&T], F. Douglis [AT&T], A. Feldmann [Univ. of Saarbruecken], Y. Goland [Marimba], A. van Hoff [Marimba], D. Hellerstein [ERS/USDA]
Date:	January 2002
Category:	Proposed Standard

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Referred by:	6 RFC
Refers to:	15 RFC

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Status

This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

This document describes how delta encoding can be supported as a compatible extension to HTTP/1.1.

Many HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) requests cause the retrieval of slightly modified instances of resources for which the client already has a cache entry. Research has shown that such modifying updates are frequent, and that the modifications are typically much smaller than the actual entity. In such cases, HTTP would make more efficient use of network bandwidth if it could transfer a minimal description of the changes, rather than the entire new instance of the resource. This is called "delta encoding."

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