Re: HTML multipart/report

[johnl () watchguard com (John Labovitz)]

Dave Roberts writes:
> Gauntlet blocks multipart data coming through the http proxy.  Anyone know
> of current problems with this type of data?
>
> It would seem that the only time I see it getting denied, it when someone
> on the inside is trying to upload a file to a remote site.  Does this type
> of data ever occur on inbound data?

Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com) used to reply with multipart
messages for its search results -- it seemed to be a way to have the
server send gradual responses (eg, `Looking for <foo>...', then a
pause, then more data).

However, they don't seem to anymore.  I don't know of any others who
currently do, either.

Multipart is basically a MIME-encoded set of independent messages --
and each part can have it's own content-type.  If a firewall is
filtering by content-type, that filtering mechanism has to understand
MIME encoding.  It makes things much more complicated, which is I
assume why Gauntlet doesn't do it.

--
John Labovitz
Senior Software Engineer
john.labovitz () watchguard com