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rfc:rfc7233

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R. Fielding, Ed. Request for Comments: 7233 Adobe Obsoletes: 2616 Y. Lafon, Ed. Category: Standards Track W3C ISSN: 2070-1721 J. Reschke, Ed.

                                                            greenbytes
                                                            June 2014
       Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Range Requests

Abstract

 The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless application-
 level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypertext information
 systems.  This document defines range requests and the rules for
 constructing and combining responses to those requests.

Status of This Memo

 This is an Internet Standards Track document.
 This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
 (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
 received public review and has been approved for publication by the
 Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
 Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
 Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
 and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
 http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7233.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
 document authors.  All rights reserved.
 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
 publication of this document.  Please review these documents
 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
 to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
 include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
 described in the Simplified BSD License.
 This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
 Contributions published or made publicly available before November
 10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
 material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
 modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
 Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
 the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
 outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
 not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
 it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
 than English.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

Table of Contents

 1. Introduction ....................................................4
    1.1. Conformance and Error Handling .............................4
    1.2. Syntax Notation ............................................4
 2. Range Units .....................................................5
    2.1. Byte Ranges ................................................5
    2.2. Other Range Units ..........................................7
    2.3. Accept-Ranges ..............................................7
 3. Range Requests ..................................................8
    3.1. Range ......................................................8
    3.2. If-Range ...................................................9
 4. Responses to a Range Request ...................................10
    4.1. 206 Partial Content .......................................10
    4.2. Content-Range .............................................12
    4.3. Combining Ranges ..........................................14
    4.4. 416 Range Not Satisfiable .................................15
 5. IANA Considerations ............................................16
    5.1. Range Unit Registry .......................................16
         5.1.1. Procedure ..........................................16
         5.1.2. Registrations ......................................16
    5.2. Status Code Registration ..................................17
    5.3. Header Field Registration .................................17
    5.4. Internet Media Type Registration ..........................17
         5.4.1. Internet Media Type multipart/byteranges ...........18
 6. Security Considerations ........................................19
    6.1. Denial-of-Service Attacks Using Range .....................19
 7. Acknowledgments ................................................19
 8. References .....................................................20
    8.1. Normative References ......................................20
    8.2. Informative References ....................................20
 Appendix A. Internet Media Type multipart/byteranges ..............21
 Appendix B. Changes from RFC 2616 .................................22
 Appendix C. Imported ABNF .........................................22
 Appendix D. Collected ABNF ........................................23
 Index .............................................................24

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 3] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

1. Introduction

 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) clients often encounter
 interrupted data transfers as a result of canceled requests or
 dropped connections.  When a client has stored a partial
 representation, it is desirable to request the remainder of that
 representation in a subsequent request rather than transfer the
 entire representation.  Likewise, devices with limited local storage
 might benefit from being able to request only a subset of a larger
 representation, such as a single page of a very large document, or
 the dimensions of an embedded image.
 This document defines HTTP/1.1 range requests, partial responses, and
 the multipart/byteranges media type.  Range requests are an OPTIONAL
 feature of HTTP, designed so that recipients not implementing this
 feature (or not supporting it for the target resource) can respond as
 if it is a normal GET request without impacting interoperability.
 Partial responses are indicated by a distinct status code to not be
 mistaken for full responses by caches that might not implement the
 feature.
 Although the range request mechanism is designed to allow for
 extensible range types, this specification only defines requests for
 byte ranges.

1.1. Conformance and Error Handling

 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
 document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
 Conformance criteria and considerations regarding error handling are
 defined in Section 2.5 of [RFC7230].

1.2. Syntax Notation

 This specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF)
 notation of [RFC5234] with a list extension, defined in Section 7 of
 [RFC7230], that allows for compact definition of comma-separated
 lists using a '#' operator (similar to how the '*' operator indicates
 repetition).  Appendix C describes rules imported from other
 documents.  Appendix D shows the collected grammar with all list
 operators expanded to standard ABNF notation.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 4] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

2. Range Units

 A representation can be partitioned into subranges according to
 various structural units, depending on the structure inherent in the
 representation's media type.  This "range unit" is used in the
 Accept-Ranges (Section 2.3) response header field to advertise
 support for range requests, the Range (Section 3.1) request header
 field to delineate the parts of a representation that are requested,
 and the Content-Range (Section 4.2) payload header field to describe
 which part of a representation is being transferred.
   range-unit       = bytes-unit / other-range-unit

2.1. Byte Ranges

 Since representation data is transferred in payloads as a sequence of
 octets, a byte range is a meaningful substructure for any
 representation transferable over HTTP (Section 3 of [RFC7231]).  The
 "bytes" range unit is defined for expressing subranges of the data's
 octet sequence.
   bytes-unit       = "bytes"
 A byte-range request can specify a single range of bytes or a set of
 ranges within a single representation.
   byte-ranges-specifier = bytes-unit "=" byte-range-set
   byte-range-set  = 1#( byte-range-spec / suffix-byte-range-spec )
   byte-range-spec = first-byte-pos "-" [ last-byte-pos ]
   first-byte-pos  = 1*DIGIT
   last-byte-pos   = 1*DIGIT
 The first-byte-pos value in a byte-range-spec gives the byte-offset
 of the first byte in a range.  The last-byte-pos value gives the
 byte-offset of the last byte in the range; that is, the byte
 positions specified are inclusive.  Byte offsets start at zero.
 Examples of byte-ranges-specifier values:
 o  The first 500 bytes (byte offsets 0-499, inclusive):
      bytes=0-499
 o  The second 500 bytes (byte offsets 500-999, inclusive):
      bytes=500-999

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 5] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 A byte-range-spec is invalid if the last-byte-pos value is present
 and less than the first-byte-pos.
 A client can limit the number of bytes requested without knowing the
 size of the selected representation.  If the last-byte-pos value is
 absent, or if the value is greater than or equal to the current
 length of the representation data, the byte range is interpreted as
 the remainder of the representation (i.e., the server replaces the
 value of last-byte-pos with a value that is one less than the current
 length of the selected representation).
 A client can request the last N bytes of the selected representation
 using a suffix-byte-range-spec.
   suffix-byte-range-spec = "-" suffix-length
   suffix-length = 1*DIGIT
 If the selected representation is shorter than the specified
 suffix-length, the entire representation is used.
 Additional examples, assuming a representation of length 10000:
 o  The final 500 bytes (byte offsets 9500-9999, inclusive):
      bytes=-500
 Or:
      bytes=9500-
 o  The first and last bytes only (bytes 0 and 9999):
      bytes=0-0,-1
 o  Other valid (but not canonical) specifications of the second 500
    bytes (byte offsets 500-999, inclusive):
      bytes=500-600,601-999
      bytes=500-700,601-999
 If a valid byte-range-set includes at least one byte-range-spec with
 a first-byte-pos that is less than the current length of the
 representation, or at least one suffix-byte-range-spec with a
 non-zero suffix-length, then the byte-range-set is satisfiable.
 Otherwise, the byte-range-set is unsatisfiable.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 6] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 In the byte-range syntax, first-byte-pos, last-byte-pos, and
 suffix-length are expressed as decimal number of octets.  Since there
 is no predefined limit to the length of a payload, recipients MUST
 anticipate potentially large decimal numerals and prevent parsing
 errors due to integer conversion overflows.

2.2. Other Range Units

 Range units are intended to be extensible.  New range units ought to
 be registered with IANA, as defined in Section 5.1.
   other-range-unit = token

2.3. Accept-Ranges

 The "Accept-Ranges" header field allows a server to indicate that it
 supports range requests for the target resource.
   Accept-Ranges     = acceptable-ranges
   acceptable-ranges = 1#range-unit / "none"
 An origin server that supports byte-range requests for a given target
 resource MAY send
   Accept-Ranges: bytes
 to indicate what range units are supported.  A client MAY generate
 range requests without having received this header field for the
 resource involved.  Range units are defined in Section 2.
 A server that does not support any kind of range request for the
 target resource MAY send
   Accept-Ranges: none
 to advise the client not to attempt a range request.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 7] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

3. Range Requests

3.1. Range

 The "Range" header field on a GET request modifies the method
 semantics to request transfer of only one or more subranges of the
 selected representation data, rather than the entire selected
 representation data.
   Range = byte-ranges-specifier / other-ranges-specifier
   other-ranges-specifier = other-range-unit "=" other-range-set
   other-range-set = 1*VCHAR
 A server MAY ignore the Range header field.  However, origin servers
 and intermediate caches ought to support byte ranges when possible,
 since Range supports efficient recovery from partially failed
 transfers and partial retrieval of large representations.  A server
 MUST ignore a Range header field received with a request method other
 than GET.
 An origin server MUST ignore a Range header field that contains a
 range unit it does not understand.  A proxy MAY discard a Range
 header field that contains a range unit it does not understand.
 A server that supports range requests MAY ignore or reject a Range
 header field that consists of more than two overlapping ranges, or a
 set of many small ranges that are not listed in ascending order,
 since both are indications of either a broken client or a deliberate
 denial-of-service attack (Section 6.1).  A client SHOULD NOT request
 multiple ranges that are inherently less efficient to process and
 transfer than a single range that encompasses the same data.
 A client that is requesting multiple ranges SHOULD list those ranges
 in ascending order (the order in which they would typically be
 received in a complete representation) unless there is a specific
 need to request a later part earlier.  For example, a user agent
 processing a large representation with an internal catalog of parts
 might need to request later parts first, particularly if the
 representation consists of pages stored in reverse order and the user
 agent wishes to transfer one page at a time.
 The Range header field is evaluated after evaluating the precondition
 header fields defined in [RFC7232], and only if the result in absence
 of the Range header field would be a 200 (OK) response.  In other
 words, Range is ignored when a conditional GET would result in a 304
 (Not Modified) response.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 8] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 The If-Range header field (Section 3.2) can be used as a precondition
 to applying the Range header field.
 If all of the preconditions are true, the server supports the Range
 header field for the target resource, and the specified range(s) are
 valid and satisfiable (as defined in Section 2.1), the server SHOULD
 send a 206 (Partial Content) response with a payload containing one
 or more partial representations that correspond to the satisfiable
 ranges requested, as defined in Section 4.
 If all of the preconditions are true, the server supports the Range
 header field for the target resource, and the specified range(s) are
 invalid or unsatisfiable, the server SHOULD send a 416 (Range Not
 Satisfiable) response.

3.2. If-Range

 If a client has a partial copy of a representation and wishes to have
 an up-to-date copy of the entire representation, it could use the
 Range header field with a conditional GET (using either or both of
 If-Unmodified-Since and If-Match.)  However, if the precondition
 fails because the representation has been modified, the client would
 then have to make a second request to obtain the entire current
 representation.
 The "If-Range" header field allows a client to "short-circuit" the
 second request.  Informally, its meaning is as follows: if the
 representation is unchanged, send me the part(s) that I am requesting
 in Range; otherwise, send me the entire representation.
   If-Range = entity-tag / HTTP-date
 A client MUST NOT generate an If-Range header field in a request that
 does not contain a Range header field.  A server MUST ignore an
 If-Range header field received in a request that does not contain a
 Range header field.  An origin server MUST ignore an If-Range header
 field received in a request for a target resource that does not
 support Range requests.
 A client MUST NOT generate an If-Range header field containing an
 entity-tag that is marked as weak.  A client MUST NOT generate an
 If-Range header field containing an HTTP-date unless the client has
 no entity-tag for the corresponding representation and the date is a
 strong validator in the sense defined by Section 2.2.2 of [RFC7232].
 A server that evaluates an If-Range precondition MUST use the strong
 comparison function when comparing entity-tags (Section 2.3.2 of
 [RFC7232]) and MUST evaluate the condition as false if an HTTP-date

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 9] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 validator is provided that is not a strong validator in the sense
 defined by Section 2.2.2 of [RFC7232].  A valid entity-tag can be
 distinguished from a valid HTTP-date by examining the first two
 characters for a DQUOTE.
 If the validator given in the If-Range header field matches the
 current validator for the selected representation of the target
 resource, then the server SHOULD process the Range header field as
 requested.  If the validator does not match, the server MUST ignore
 the Range header field.  Note that this comparison by exact match,
 including when the validator is an HTTP-date, differs from the
 "earlier than or equal to" comparison used when evaluating an
 If-Unmodified-Since conditional.

4. Responses to a Range Request

4.1. 206 Partial Content

 The 206 (Partial Content) status code indicates that the server is
 successfully fulfilling a range request for the target resource by
 transferring one or more parts of the selected representation that
 correspond to the satisfiable ranges found in the request's Range
 header field (Section 3.1).
 If a single part is being transferred, the server generating the 206
 response MUST generate a Content-Range header field, describing what
 range of the selected representation is enclosed, and a payload
 consisting of the range.  For example:
   HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
   Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
   Last-Modified: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:58:08 GMT
   Content-Range: bytes 21010-47021/47022
   Content-Length: 26012
   Content-Type: image/gif
   ... 26012 bytes of partial image data ...
 If multiple parts are being transferred, the server generating the
 206 response MUST generate a "multipart/byteranges" payload, as
 defined in Appendix A, and a Content-Type header field containing the
 multipart/byteranges media type and its required boundary parameter.
 To avoid confusion with single-part responses, a server MUST NOT
 generate a Content-Range header field in the HTTP header section of a
 multiple part response (this field will be sent in each part
 instead).

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 10] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 Within the header area of each body part in the multipart payload,
 the server MUST generate a Content-Range header field corresponding
 to the range being enclosed in that body part.  If the selected
 representation would have had a Content-Type header field in a 200
 (OK) response, the server SHOULD generate that same Content-Type
 field in the header area of each body part.  For example:
   HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
   Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
   Last-Modified: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:58:08 GMT
   Content-Length: 1741
   Content-Type: multipart/byteranges; boundary=THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
  1. -THIS_STRING_SEPARATES

Content-Type: application/pdf

   Content-Range: bytes 500-999/8000
   ...the first range...
   --THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
   Content-Type: application/pdf
   Content-Range: bytes 7000-7999/8000
   ...the second range
   --THIS_STRING_SEPARATES--
 When multiple ranges are requested, a server MAY coalesce any of the
 ranges that overlap, or that are separated by a gap that is smaller
 than the overhead of sending multiple parts, regardless of the order
 in which the corresponding byte-range-spec appeared in the received
 Range header field.  Since the typical overhead between parts of a
 multipart/byteranges payload is around 80 bytes, depending on the
 selected representation's media type and the chosen boundary
 parameter length, it can be less efficient to transfer many small
 disjoint parts than it is to transfer the entire selected
 representation.
 A server MUST NOT generate a multipart response to a request for a
 single range, since a client that does not request multiple parts
 might not support multipart responses.  However, a server MAY
 generate a multipart/byteranges payload with only a single body part
 if multiple ranges were requested and only one range was found to be
 satisfiable or only one range remained after coalescing.  A client
 that cannot process a multipart/byteranges response MUST NOT generate
 a request that asks for multiple ranges.
 When a multipart response payload is generated, the server SHOULD
 send the parts in the same order that the corresponding
 byte-range-spec appeared in the received Range header field,

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 11] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 excluding those ranges that were deemed unsatisfiable or that were
 coalesced into other ranges.  A client that receives a multipart
 response MUST inspect the Content-Range header field present in each
 body part in order to determine which range is contained in that body
 part; a client cannot rely on receiving the same ranges that it
 requested, nor the same order that it requested.
 When a 206 response is generated, the server MUST generate the
 following header fields, in addition to those required above, if the
 field would have been sent in a 200 (OK) response to the same
 request: Date, Cache-Control, ETag, Expires, Content-Location, and
 Vary.
 If a 206 is generated in response to a request with an If-Range
 header field, the sender SHOULD NOT generate other representation
 header fields beyond those required above, because the client is
 understood to already have a prior response containing those header
 fields.  Otherwise, the sender MUST generate all of the
 representation header fields that would have been sent in a 200 (OK)
 response to the same request.
 A 206 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise
 indicated by explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of
 [RFC7234]).

4.2. Content-Range

 The "Content-Range" header field is sent in a single part 206
 (Partial Content) response to indicate the partial range of the
 selected representation enclosed as the message payload, sent in each
 part of a multipart 206 response to indicate the range enclosed
 within each body part, and sent in 416 (Range Not Satisfiable)
 responses to provide information about the selected representation.
   Content-Range       = byte-content-range
                       / other-content-range
   byte-content-range  = bytes-unit SP
                         ( byte-range-resp / unsatisfied-range )
   byte-range-resp     = byte-range "/" ( complete-length / "*" )
   byte-range          = first-byte-pos "-" last-byte-pos
   unsatisfied-range   = "*/" complete-length
   complete-length     = 1*DIGIT
   other-content-range = other-range-unit SP other-range-resp
   other-range-resp    = *CHAR

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 12] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 If a 206 (Partial Content) response contains a Content-Range header
 field with a range unit (Section 2) that the recipient does not
 understand, the recipient MUST NOT attempt to recombine it with a
 stored representation.  A proxy that receives such a message SHOULD
 forward it downstream.
 For byte ranges, a sender SHOULD indicate the complete length of the
 representation from which the range has been extracted, unless the
 complete length is unknown or difficult to determine.  An asterisk
 character ("*") in place of the complete-length indicates that the
 representation length was unknown when the header field was
 generated.
 The following example illustrates when the complete length of the
 selected representation is known by the sender to be 1234 bytes:
   Content-Range: bytes 42-1233/1234
 and this second example illustrates when the complete length is
 unknown:
   Content-Range: bytes 42-1233/*
 A Content-Range field value is invalid if it contains a
 byte-range-resp that has a last-byte-pos value less than its
 first-byte-pos value, or a complete-length value less than or equal
 to its last-byte-pos value.  The recipient of an invalid
 Content-Range MUST NOT attempt to recombine the received content with
 a stored representation.
 A server generating a 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) response to a
 byte-range request SHOULD send a Content-Range header field with an
 unsatisfied-range value, as in the following example:
   Content-Range: bytes */1234
 The complete-length in a 416 response indicates the current length of
 the selected representation.
 The Content-Range header field has no meaning for status codes that
 do not explicitly describe its semantic.  For this specification,
 only the 206 (Partial Content) and 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) status
 codes describe a meaning for Content-Range.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 13] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 The following are examples of Content-Range values in which the
 selected representation contains a total of 1234 bytes:
 o  The first 500 bytes:
      Content-Range: bytes 0-499/1234
 o  The second 500 bytes:
      Content-Range: bytes 500-999/1234
 o  All except for the first 500 bytes:
      Content-Range: bytes 500-1233/1234
 o  The last 500 bytes:
      Content-Range: bytes 734-1233/1234

4.3. Combining Ranges

 A response might transfer only a subrange of a representation if the
 connection closed prematurely or if the request used one or more
 Range specifications.  After several such transfers, a client might
 have received several ranges of the same representation.  These
 ranges can only be safely combined if they all have in common the
 same strong validator (Section 2.1 of [RFC7232]).
 A client that has received multiple partial responses to GET requests
 on a target resource MAY combine those responses into a larger
 continuous range if they share the same strong validator.
 If the most recent response is an incomplete 200 (OK) response, then
 the header fields of that response are used for any combined response
 and replace those of the matching stored responses.
 If the most recent response is a 206 (Partial Content) response and
 at least one of the matching stored responses is a 200 (OK), then the
 combined response header fields consist of the most recent 200
 response's header fields.  If all of the matching stored responses
 are 206 responses, then the stored response with the most recent
 header fields is used as the source of header fields for the combined
 response, except that the client MUST use other header fields
 provided in the new response, aside from Content-Range, to replace
 all instances of the corresponding header fields in the stored
 response.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 14] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 The combined response message body consists of the union of partial
 content ranges in the new response and each of the selected
 responses.  If the union consists of the entire range of the
 representation, then the client MUST process the combined response as
 if it were a complete 200 (OK) response, including a Content-Length
 header field that reflects the complete length.  Otherwise, the
 client MUST process the set of continuous ranges as one of the
 following: an incomplete 200 (OK) response if the combined response
 is a prefix of the representation, a single 206 (Partial Content)
 response containing a multipart/byteranges body, or multiple 206
 (Partial Content) responses, each with one continuous range that is
 indicated by a Content-Range header field.

4.4. 416 Range Not Satisfiable

 The 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) status code indicates that none of
 the ranges in the request's Range header field (Section 3.1) overlap
 the current extent of the selected resource or that the set of ranges
 requested has been rejected due to invalid ranges or an excessive
 request of small or overlapping ranges.
 For byte ranges, failing to overlap the current extent means that the
 first-byte-pos of all of the byte-range-spec values were greater than
 the current length of the selected representation.  When this status
 code is generated in response to a byte-range request, the sender
 SHOULD generate a Content-Range header field specifying the current
 length of the selected representation (Section 4.2).
 For example:
   HTTP/1.1 416 Range Not Satisfiable
   Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:41:54 GMT
   Content-Range: bytes */47022
    Note: Because servers are free to ignore Range, many
    implementations will simply respond with the entire selected
    representation in a 200 (OK) response.  That is partly because
    most clients are prepared to receive a 200 (OK) to complete the
    task (albeit less efficiently) and partly because clients might
    not stop making an invalid partial request until they have
    received a complete representation.  Thus, clients cannot depend
    on receiving a 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) response even when it
    is most appropriate.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 15] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

5. IANA Considerations

5.1. Range Unit Registry

 The "HTTP Range Unit Registry" defines the namespace for the range
 unit names and refers to their corresponding specifications.  The
 registry has been created and is now maintained at
 <http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-parameters>.

5.1.1. Procedure

 Registration of an HTTP Range Unit MUST include the following fields:
 o  Name
 o  Description
 o  Pointer to specification text
 Values to be added to this namespace require IETF Review (see
 [RFC5226], Section 4.1).

5.1.2. Registrations

 The initial range unit registry contains the registrations below:
 +-------------+---------------------------------------+-------------+
 | Range Unit  | Description                           | Reference   |
 | Name        |                                       |             |
 +-------------+---------------------------------------+-------------+
 | bytes       | a range of octets                     | Section 2.1 |
 | none        | reserved as keyword, indicating no    | Section 2.3 |
 |             | ranges are supported                  |             |
 +-------------+---------------------------------------+-------------+
 The change controller is: "IETF (iesg@ietf.org) - Internet
 Engineering Task Force".

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 16] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

5.2. Status Code Registration

 The "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Status Code Registry" located
 at <http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes> has been
 updated to include the registrations below:
 +-------+-----------------------+-------------+
 | Value | Description           | Reference   |
 +-------+-----------------------+-------------+
 | 206   | Partial Content       | Section 4.1 |
 | 416   | Range Not Satisfiable | Section 4.4 |
 +-------+-----------------------+-------------+

5.3. Header Field Registration

 HTTP header fields are registered within the "Message Headers"
 registry maintained at
 <http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/>.
 This document defines the following HTTP header fields, so their
 associated registry entries have been updated according to the
 permanent registrations below (see [BCP90]):
 +-------------------+----------+----------+-------------+
 | Header Field Name | Protocol | Status   | Reference   |
 +-------------------+----------+----------+-------------+
 | Accept-Ranges     | http     | standard | Section 2.3 |
 | Content-Range     | http     | standard | Section 4.2 |
 | If-Range          | http     | standard | Section 3.2 |
 | Range             | http     | standard | Section 3.1 |
 +-------------------+----------+----------+-------------+
 The change controller is: "IETF (iesg@ietf.org) - Internet
 Engineering Task Force".

5.4. Internet Media Type Registration

 IANA maintains the registry of Internet media types [BCP13] at
 <http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types>.
 This document serves as the specification for the Internet media type
 "multipart/byteranges".  The following has been registered with IANA.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 17] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

5.4.1. Internet Media Type multipart/byteranges

 Type name:  multipart
 Subtype name:  byteranges
 Required parameters:  boundary
 Optional parameters:  N/A
 Encoding considerations:  only "7bit", "8bit", or "binary" are
    permitted
 Security considerations:  see Section 6
 Interoperability considerations:  N/A
 Published specification:  This specification (see Appendix A).
 Applications that use this media type:  HTTP components supporting
    multiple ranges in a single request.
 Fragment identifier considerations:  N/A
 Additional information:
    Deprecated alias names for this type:  N/A
    Magic number(s):  N/A
    File extension(s):  N/A
    Macintosh file type code(s):  N/A
 Person and email address to contact for further information:  See
    Authors' Addresses section.
 Intended usage:  COMMON
 Restrictions on usage:  N/A
 Author:  See Authors' Addresses section.
 Change controller:  IESG

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 18] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

6. Security Considerations

 This section is meant to inform developers, information providers,
 and users of known security concerns specific to the HTTP range
 request mechanisms.  More general security considerations are
 addressed in HTTP messaging [RFC7230] and semantics [RFC7231].

6.1. Denial-of-Service Attacks Using Range

 Unconstrained multiple range requests are susceptible to denial-of-
 service attacks because the effort required to request many
 overlapping ranges of the same data is tiny compared to the time,
 memory, and bandwidth consumed by attempting to serve the requested
 data in many parts.  Servers ought to ignore, coalesce, or reject
 egregious range requests, such as requests for more than two
 overlapping ranges or for many small ranges in a single set,
 particularly when the ranges are requested out of order for no
 apparent reason.  Multipart range requests are not designed to
 support random access.

7. Acknowledgments

 See Section 10 of [RFC7230].

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 19] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

8. References

8.1. Normative References

 [RFC2046]  Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
            Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046,
            November 1996.
 [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
            Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
 [RFC5234]  Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
            Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008.
 [RFC7230]  Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
            Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
            RFC 7230, June 2014.
 [RFC7231]  Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
            Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content", RFC 7231,
            June 2014.
 [RFC7232]  Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
            Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Conditional Requests", RFC 7232,
            June 2014.
 [RFC7234]  Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
            Ed., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Caching",
            RFC 7234, June 2014.

8.2. Informative References

 [BCP13]    Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, "Media Type
            Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13,
            RFC 6838, January 2013.
 [BCP90]    Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration
            Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864,
            September 2004.
 [RFC2616]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
            Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
            Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
 [RFC5226]  Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
            IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
            May 2008.

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 20] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

Appendix A. Internet Media Type multipart/byteranges

 When a 206 (Partial Content) response message includes the content of
 multiple ranges, they are transmitted as body parts in a multipart
 message body ([RFC2046], Section 5.1) with the media type of
 "multipart/byteranges".
 The multipart/byteranges media type includes one or more body parts,
 each with its own Content-Type and Content-Range fields.  The
 required boundary parameter specifies the boundary string used to
 separate each body part.
 Implementation Notes:
 1.  Additional CRLFs might precede the first boundary string in the
     body.
 2.  Although [RFC2046] permits the boundary string to be quoted, some
     existing implementations handle a quoted boundary string
     incorrectly.
 3.  A number of clients and servers were coded to an early draft of
     the byteranges specification that used a media type of multipart/
     x-byteranges, which is almost (but not quite) compatible with
     this type.
 Despite the name, the "multipart/byteranges" media type is not
 limited to byte ranges.  The following example uses an "exampleunit"
 range unit:
   HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
   Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 06:25:24 GMT
   Last-Modified: Tue, 14 July 04:58:08 GMT
   Content-Length: 2331785
   Content-Type: multipart/byteranges; boundary=THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
  1. -THIS_STRING_SEPARATES

Content-Type: video/example

   Content-Range: exampleunit 1.2-4.3/25
   ...the first range...
   --THIS_STRING_SEPARATES
   Content-Type: video/example
   Content-Range: exampleunit 11.2-14.3/25
   ...the second range
   --THIS_STRING_SEPARATES--

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 21] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

Appendix B. Changes from RFC 2616

 Servers are given more leeway in how they respond to a range request,
 in order to mitigate abuse by malicious (or just greedy) clients.
 (Section 3.1)
 A weak validator cannot be used in a 206 response.  (Section 4.1)
 The Content-Range header field only has meaning when the status code
 explicitly defines its use.  (Section 4.2)
 This specification introduces a Range Unit Registry.  (Section 5.1)
 multipart/byteranges can consist of a single part.  (Appendix A)

Appendix C. Imported ABNF

 The following core rules are included by reference, as defined in
 Appendix B.1 of [RFC5234]: ALPHA (letters), CR (carriage return),
 CRLF (CR LF), CTL (controls), DIGIT (decimal 0-9), DQUOTE (double
 quote), HEXDIG (hexadecimal 0-9/A-F/a-f), LF (line feed), OCTET (any
 8-bit sequence of data), SP (space), and VCHAR (any visible US-ASCII
 character).
 Note that all rules derived from token are to be compared
 case-insensitively, like range-unit and acceptable-ranges.
 The rules below are defined in [RFC7230]:
   OWS        = <OWS, see [RFC7230], Section 3.2.3>
   token      = <token, see [RFC7230], Section 3.2.6>
 The rules below are defined in other parts:
   HTTP-date  = <HTTP-date, see [RFC7231], Section 7.1.1.1>
   entity-tag = <entity-tag, see [RFC7232], Section 2.3>

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 22] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

Appendix D. Collected ABNF

 In the collected ABNF below, list rules are expanded as per Section
 1.2 of [RFC7230].
 Accept-Ranges = acceptable-ranges
 Content-Range = byte-content-range / other-content-range
 HTTP-date = <HTTP-date, see [RFC7231], Section 7.1.1.1>
 If-Range = entity-tag / HTTP-date
 OWS = <OWS, see [RFC7230], Section 3.2.3>
 Range = byte-ranges-specifier / other-ranges-specifier
 acceptable-ranges = ( *( "," OWS ) range-unit *( OWS "," [ OWS
  range-unit ] ) ) / "none"
 byte-content-range = bytes-unit SP ( byte-range-resp /
  unsatisfied-range )
 byte-range = first-byte-pos "-" last-byte-pos
 byte-range-resp = byte-range "/" ( complete-length / "*" )
 byte-range-set = *( "," OWS ) ( byte-range-spec /
  suffix-byte-range-spec ) *( OWS "," [ OWS ( byte-range-spec /
  suffix-byte-range-spec ) ] )
 byte-range-spec = first-byte-pos "-" [ last-byte-pos ]
 byte-ranges-specifier = bytes-unit "=" byte-range-set
 bytes-unit = "bytes"
 complete-length = 1*DIGIT
 entity-tag = <entity-tag, see [RFC7232], Section 2.3>
 first-byte-pos = 1*DIGIT
 last-byte-pos = 1*DIGIT
 other-content-range = other-range-unit SP other-range-resp
 other-range-resp = *CHAR
 other-range-set = 1*VCHAR
 other-range-unit = token
 other-ranges-specifier = other-range-unit "=" other-range-set
 range-unit = bytes-unit / other-range-unit
 suffix-byte-range-spec = "-" suffix-length

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 23] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 suffix-length = 1*DIGIT
 token = <token, see [RFC7230], Section 3.2.6>
 unsatisfied-range = "*/" complete-length

Index

 2
    206 Partial Content (status code)  10
 4
    416 Range Not Satisfiable (status code)  15
 A
    Accept-Ranges header field  7
 C
    Content-Range header field  12
 G
    Grammar
       Accept-Ranges  7
       acceptable-ranges  7
       byte-content-range  12
       byte-range  12
       byte-range-resp  12
       byte-range-set  5
       byte-range-spec  5
       byte-ranges-specifier  5
       bytes-unit  5
       complete-length  12
       Content-Range  12
       first-byte-pos  5
       If-Range  9
       last-byte-pos  5
       other-content-range  12
       other-range-resp  12
       other-range-unit  5, 7
       Range  8
       range-unit  5
       ranges-specifier  5
       suffix-byte-range-spec  6
       suffix-length  6
       unsatisfied-range  12

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 24] RFC 7233 HTTP/1.1 Range Requests June 2014

 I
    If-Range header field  9
 M
    Media Type
       multipart/byteranges  18, 21
       multipart/x-byteranges  19
    multipart/byteranges Media Type  18, 21
    multipart/x-byteranges Media Type  21
 R
    Range header field  8

Authors' Addresses

 Roy T. Fielding (editor)
 Adobe Systems Incorporated
 345 Park Ave
 San Jose, CA  95110
 USA
 EMail: fielding@gbiv.com
 URI:   http://roy.gbiv.com/
 Yves Lafon (editor)
 World Wide Web Consortium
 W3C / ERCIM
 2004, rte des Lucioles
 Sophia-Antipolis, AM  06902
 France
 EMail: ylafon@w3.org
 URI:   http://www.raubacapeu.net/people/yves/
 Julian F. Reschke (editor)
 greenbytes GmbH
 Hafenweg 16
 Muenster, NW  48155
 Germany
 EMail: julian.reschke@greenbytes.de
 URI:   http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/

Fielding, et al. Standards Track [Page 25]

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