Re: URLs and TLS

Not Telling <[email protected]> Tue, 10 Mar 1998 07:27:02 -0800
Newsgroups gmane.ietf.apps-tls
Organization Yoyoydne Systems Labs, Inc.
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Chris Newman wrote:
> 
> However, this raises the following questions: Is it ever useful to specify
> in a URL that some use of TLS is required?  If so, what should the options
> be?

There's the "http://" vs "https://" level of distinction; clearly
that's useful today.  The "s suffix" meta-scheme for URLs _could_ be
continued, even when used with a single assigned port that needs to
pay extra negotiation costs (STARTTLS).  Equivalently, just a ";TLS"
token in URLs that don't otherwise restrict the URL syntax.  (HTTP
is not such a candidate!)

Re options ... no utility in duplicating what TLS provides, I'd say.
The URL can be tampered with, unlike the TLS handshake.