Subject: HTTP status codes

From: "Henning Schulzrinne (BL)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 16:17:22 -0400

I brought this up at the San Jose meeting, but there never was a
satisfactory (official) answer, as far as I remember.

SIP and RTSP re-use a number of HTTP status codes, among other
properties. It is likely that they may need to or want to adopt other
HTTP status codes that emerge in the future. Thus, it is desirable that
the SIP and RTSP-specific status codes do not conflict with HTTP codes.

One possible solution: Declare officially that HTTP will only use status
codes up to x49 (say) and leave others for private extensions, including
SIP and RTSP.

(Note to HTTP-WG: SIP and RTSP are described, inter alia, at  and
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/rtsp and
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/sip)

Comments and decisions are appreciated.

Henning
-- 
Henning Schulzrinne         email: [email-masked]
Dept. of Computer Science   phone: +1 908 949 8344 (at Bell Labs)
Columbia University         fax:   +1 212 666-0140
New York, NY 10027          URL:   http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs

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From: "Joel N. Weber II" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 16:55:35 -0400

Sender: [email-masked]
   Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 16:17:22 -0400
   From: "Henning Schulzrinne (BL)" <[email-masked]>
   Organization: Columbia University

There may be things other than SIP and RTSP, and it may be the case that
those other protocols will define status codes which are useful in
SIP and RTSP and HTTP, so it might be better to do something like this:

x00 through x49 is for HTTP
x50 through x59 is for SIP
x60 through x69 is for RTSP
and then we can assign blocks of ten to a few more protocols later.

another possibilty is to state that x00 through x49 are for things defined
by the HTTP spec authors, and x50 through x99 are for others, and have
one central authority to control allocation of those numbers in the
x50 through x99 range.  (It is probably desireable to keep the status
codes defined by HTTP consecutive.)

But whatever we decide to do, I don't think SIP and RTSP should be
considered `private extensions'.  Perhaps `defined by people other
than the authors of the HTTP spec' is an OK description, though.

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From: [email-masked] (Jim Gettys)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 14:18:29 -0700

One way or the other, I believe there is going to need to be an IANA registry.
Private codes don't work too well, as two different people might
still happen to choose the same one.

To get one, you need a standards track document that defines the
process to deal with the registry.  (I.e. IANA needs directions on how
it should be run).

So you need to generate an Internet draft outlining the process, and
circulate it to the appropriate working groups.  It doesn't have to be
long, but it does have to exist, and go through the normal mill.

I think you'll find people here receptive to such a document (but don't
expect any volunteers from here either to write the first draft; we have
our hands full getting 1.1 to draft standard right now).
				- Jim

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 09:37:24 -0400

A first drafty draft is at

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/sip/draft-ietf-http-status-00.txt

Comments are appreciated; this is a first attempt. Please let me know if
I should submit this (a) at all, (b) as a WG submission.

Thanks.

Henning
-- 
Henning Schulzrinne         email: [email-masked]
Dept. of Computer Science   phone: +1 212 939-7042
Columbia University         fax:   +1 212 666-0140
New York, NY 10027          URL:   http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs

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From: [email-masked] (Koen Holtman)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 21:10:22 +0200 (MET DST)

>codes up to x49 (say) and leave others for private extensions, including

I don't know if there are any deployed implementations of SIP and RTPS
already.  If there are not, I would suggest using 4 digits for all SIP
and RTPS codes not inherited from HTTP, e.g. 1xxx for SIP and 2xxx for
RTPS.  HTTP-inherited codes could be 0xxx or simply xxx.

>Henning

Koen.