Skip to main content

1. Introduction

HTTP is typically used for distributed information systems, where performance can be improved by the use of response caches. This document defines aspects of HTTP/1.1 related to caching and reusing response messages.

An HTTP cache is a local store of response messages and the subsystem that controls storage, retrieval, and deletion of messages in it. A cache stores cacheable responses in order to reduce the response time and network bandwidth consumption on future, equivalent requests. Any client or server MAY employ a cache, though a cache cannot be used by a server that is acting as a tunnel.

A shared cache is a cache that stores responses to be reused by more than one user; shared caches are usually (but not always) deployed as a part of an intermediary. A private cache, in contrast, is dedicated to a single user; often, they are deployed as a component of a user agent.

The goal of caching in HTTP/1.1 is to significantly improve performance by reusing a prior response message to satisfy a current request. A stored response is considered "fresh", as defined in Section 4.2, if the response can be reused without "validation" (checking with the origin server to see if the cached response remains valid for this request). A fresh response can therefore reduce both latency and network overhead each time it is reused. When a cached response is not fresh, it might still be reusable if it can be freshened by validation (Section 4.3) or if the origin is unavailable (Section 4.2.4).

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 B describes rules imported from other documents. Appendix C shows the collected grammar with all list operators expanded to standard ABNF notation.

1.2.1. Delta Seconds​

The delta-seconds rule specifies a non-negative integer, representing time in seconds.

delta-seconds  = 1*DIGIT

A recipient parsing a delta-seconds value and converting it to binary form ought to use an arithmetic type of at least 31 bits of non-negative integer range. If a cache receives a delta-seconds value greater than the greatest integer it can represent, or if any of its subsequent calculations overflows, the cache MUST consider the value to be either 2147483648 (2^31) or the greatest positive integer it can conveniently represent.

Note: The value 2147483648 is here for historical reasons, effectively represents infinity (over 68 years), and does not need to be stored in binary form; an implementation could produce it as a canned string if any overflow occurs, even if the calculations are performed with an arithmetic type incapable of directly representing that number. What matters here is that an overflow be detected and not treated as a negative value in later calculations.