It would go something like this:
client:
GET whatever HTTP/1.0
Comment: just a normal request
server:
HTTP/1.0 200 Document follows
Accept: [the request formats we accept]
Public: MGET
[normal return data for whatever]
client (note that "whatever" in this request should probably be the
same as the above "whatever" for accounting purposes):
MGET whatever HTTP/1.0
Accept: [the reply formats we accept]
Content-type: multipart/mixed
[the various requests encoded as message/http-request]
server:
HTTP/1.0 200 Document follows
Content-type: multipart/mixed
[the various replys encoded as message/http-reply]
==============
One other issue we **URGENTLY** need to address is returning error responses
for http requests. I've mentioned this in the past (several times in
fact) and it's been ignored but now that we have caching proxy servers
this has become *very* important (otherwise you have a useless system
that caches error messages forever).
The only solution that I can see is to move clients towards accepting
multipart messages and having servers return them whenever possible. The
proxy gateways should be setup to always request multipart replies and
convert the data as needed for clients.
--sanders