HTTP11Standards

HTTP11Standards refers to the set of specifications that define the behavior and format of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol for version 1.1. It is primarily defined and maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) through the HTTP Working Group. The baseline remains HTTP/1.1, commonly identified by RFCs in the 7230–7235 family, which replaced the earlier RFC 2616. The standards describe how clients and servers exchange messages, including request methods such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and the response status codes in the 1xx–5xx ranges. They specify the syntax of request lines, status lines, header fields, and the rules for message bodies, as well as requirements for persistent connections via keep-alive and the use of CRLF for line endings.

The HTTP/1.1 suite introduces features to improve performance and efficiency, such as persistent connections, chunked transfer encoding, host header requirements for virtual hosting, and content negotiation through headers like Accept, Content-Type, Cache-Control, and ETag. It also covers caching, range requests, and the semantics of content encodings and character sets. Security considerations are addressed to enable secure transport over TLS in practice (HTTPS), though security is provided by TLS independently of HTTP/1.1.

The standards landscape for HTTP/1.1 remains widely deployed even as newer versions like HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 offer performance advances. The HTTP Working Group continues to maintain compatibility guidance and references across RFCs, and implementers consult the RFC series for interoperability, conformance testing, and best practices. In summary, HTTP11Standards comprise the documented rules that govern how web clients and servers communicate in HTTP/1.1, forming a stable foundation amid evolving protocols.