DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL, BUT PLEASE POST YOUR BUG 
RELATED COMMENTS THROUGH THE WEB INTERFACE AVAILABLE AT
<http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23294>.
ANY REPLY MADE TO THIS MESSAGE WILL NOT BE COLLECTED AND 
INSERTED IN THE BUG DATABASE.

http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=23294

Handle IE 6.0 GET user-agent: contype as HEAD

           Summary: Handle IE 6.0 GET user-agent: contype as HEAD
           Product: Tomcat 5
           Version: 5.0.0
          Platform: Other
        OS/Version: Other
            Status: NEW
          Severity: Enhancement
          Priority: Other
         Component: Unknown
        AssignedTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
        ReportedBy: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Chris Rolfe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> reports that IE 6.0 uses
  GET
  user-agent: 
contype
insteat of
  HEAD

He correctly complains that this causes extraneous load on the 
server and  bandwidth consumption. If his report is correct Tomcat could sumulate a 
HEAD request 
(although I'm in doubt what would be best to supply instead of user-agent in such a 
case: probably 
omit this header or, as we know it's a IE, probably generate smth?) if user-agent is 
contype?

Here's the original message by Chris Rolfe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Here's a 
followup to:
>Subject: DefaultServlet throws a LOT of broken pipe exceptions on mp3s.

-------
I 
found the cause of my java.io.IOException "Broken pipe" errors.

IE 6 is sending two GET 
requests for each .mp3 file. I haven't tested the
behavior on IE 5.x or other plugin-handled mime 
types.

The first GET sets the request header:

user-agent = contype

and is a Microsoft 
(ie, non-standard) attempt at data-sniffing intended to
get just the header information. 
Tomcat 4.x starts sending the content data,
but IE resets/drops the connection after 30-50k 
(100-500 ms), generating a
"Broken pipe" exception.

IE then sends a second request for the 
content using:

user-agent=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

which 
completes.

[see Microsoft Knowledge Base Articles: KB 293792, KB 254337, KB 
310388.
Note: KB 310388 describes a fix for multiple posts in IE 6 SP1 (service pack
1). Tests 
from an IE 6 SP1 client however still demonstrate the multiple
GETs.  

I'm still trying to 
determine if the broken pipe GET is the cause of the
unreliable caching behaving I'm seeing in IE 
6 (symptom: IE 6 clients are
downloading about 10x vs. Netscape/Safari clients; few if any 
304
responses). 

-------

So, two questions for the karmically kind:

1) Any bright ideas on 
a workaround for the user-agent: contype GET? At
present it's double-banging my server for 100-
200k files. Is there a context
level mechanism for filtering, ie, blocking, requests based on 
headers?

2) Is this more properly a development issue? I see workarounds in the
4.1.27 and 
5.x source to ignore "Broken pipe" exceptions and the multiple
GET is apparently  rooted in 
kludges from browser 4.x days -- but I got no
hits for "user-agent contype" in a google of the tomcat 
archives.

Cheers,
Chris

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to