Internet DRAFT - draft-nottingham-thanks-larry
draft-nottingham-thanks-larry
httpbis M. Nottingham
Internet-Draft August 11, 2017
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: February 12, 2018
Reserving the 418 HTTP Status Code
draft-nottingham-thanks-larry-00
Abstract
[RFC2324] was an April 1 RFC that lampooned the various ways HTTP was
abused; one such abuse was the definition of the application-specific
418 (I'm a Teapot) status code.
In the intervening years, this status code has been widely
implemented as an "easter egg", and therefore is effectively consumed
by this use.
This document changes 418 to the status of "Reserved" in the IANA
HTTP Status Code registry to reflect that.
Note to Readers
_RFC EDITOR: please remove this section before publication_
The issues list for this draft can be found at
https://github.com/mnot/I-D/labels/thanks-larry.
The most recent (often, unpublished) draft is at
https://mnot.github.io/I-D/thanks-larry/.
Recent changes are listed at https://github.com/mnot/I-D/commits/gh-
pages/thanks-larry.
See also the draft's current status in the IETF datatracker, at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-thanks-larry/.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Nottingham Expires February 12, 2018 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft 418 August 2017
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This Internet-Draft will expire on February 12, 2018.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1. Introduction
[RFC2324] was an April 1 RFC that lampooned the various ways HTTP was
abused; one such abuse was the definition of the application-specific
418 (I'm a Teapot) status code.
In the intervening years, this status code has been widely
implemented as an "Easter Egg", and therefore is effectively consumed
by this use.
This document changes 418 to the status of "Reserved" in the IANA
HTTP Status Code registry to reflect that.
This indicates that the status code cannot be assigned to other
applications currently. If future circumstances require its use
(e.g., exhaustion of all other 4NN status codes), it can be re-
assigned to another use.
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Internet-Draft 418 August 2017
Implementations are encouraged to avoid "squatting" on status codes
in this manner; while there are a number of unassigned status codes
in each range currently, unofficial, uncoordinated use makes the
definition of new status codes more difficult over the lifetime of
HTTP, which (hopefully) is a potentially very long period of time.
2. IANA Considerations
This document updates the following entry in the Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP) Status Code Registry:
o Value: 418
o Description: Reserved
o Reference: [this document]
IANA should also typographically distinguish "Unassigned" and
"Reserved" in the registry descriptions, to prevent confusion.
3. Security Considerations
This document has no security content.
4. Informative References
[RFC2324] Masinter, L., "Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol
(HTCPCP/1.0)", RFC 2324, DOI 10.17487/RFC2324, April 1998,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2324>.
Author's Address
Mark Nottingham
Email: mnot@mnot.net
URI: https://www.mnot.net/
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