Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 17:36:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Alexei Kosut <akosut@organic.com>
To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com
Subject: Re: performance ``bugs'' in apache-1.1b4's P-HTTP 
In-Reply-To: <199607110027.RAA01541@dash.isi.edu>
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On Wed, 10 Jul 1996, John Heidemann wrote:

> What versions of Netscape exhibit the problem?  If they include 2.x
> (i.e., any non-beta versions), then Apache certainly must work around
> the problem.  If the problem occurs only in 3.0bX versions (for X < 5)
> then it might be feasible to tell people to upgrade.  (People using
> betas are presumably motivated and knowledgeable enough to upgrade,
> while most people use production software and won't upgrade unless you
> put a gun to their head.)

The problem occurs with all Netscape Navigator versions, starting with the
2.0 betas and through at least 2.01 (I haven't tested it with 3.0,
actually, maybe they fixed it.)

> Another option would be to have Apache detect browser versions and
> work-around the bug only when necessary.  It seems a shame to clutter
> up Apache with such code, but it may be a reasonable engineering
> solution.

Possibly. I think at one point, before we found the fflush() solution
(which, at least, seemed clean - back when the keep-alive code was first
implemented in Apache, we were trying things like not enabling keep-alive
for small files and other stuff), we did that. I don't particuarly like
checking browser versions, though. For one thing, you catch imposters,
like Microsoft Internet Explorer, which claims to be Netscape, but isn't.

-- Alexei Kosut <akosut@organic.com>            The Apache HTTP Server 
   http://www.nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us/~akosut/      http://www.apache.org/