[syslinux] Opinion wanted: metadata in HTTP requests (updated)

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 04/26/2011 12:51 PM, Andrew Stuart wrote:
> 
> Hmm, Not my area of expertise, and I don't know what level of overhead 
> it would add, but wouldn't pipelining handle this in a suitable fashion? 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_pipelining
> 

I have no intention of implementing HTTP pipelining or any other kind of
connection caching; the complexity is off the chart.

> In any case, I would think the problem you present is a major issue. 
> It's still going to outperform tftp I would think. However, the proposed 
> http://example.com/something?? may cause problems for a lot of proxy 
> servers I would imagine.

The proxy servers wouldn't ever see it.

> I for one am experimenting with an internet based ipxe/pxelinux setup, 
> using squid at two locations to cache the content, as opposed to my 
> existing tftp/rsync/etc setup to maintain multiple sites.

Explicit (as opposed to transparent) proxies are a "special" kind of
headache that I haven't even begun to consider at this point.

	-hpa