Relevant Standards

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This page documents all the relevant standards that the Apache HTTP Server follows, along with brief descriptions.

In addition to the information listed below, the following resources should be consulted:

This document is not yet complete.

HTTP Recommendations

Regardless of what modules are compiled and used, Apache as a basic web server complies with the following IETF recommendations:

RFC 1945 (Informational): The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol with the lightness and speed necessary for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. This documents HTTP/1.0.
RFC 2616 (Standards Track): The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. This documents HTTP/1.1.
RFC 2396 (Standards Track): A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact string of characters for identifying an abstract or physical resource.

Regarding the Hypertext Markup Language, Apache complies with the following IETF and W3C recommendations:

RFC 2854 (Informational): This document summarizes the history of HTML development, and defines the "text/html" MIME type by pointing to the relevant W3C recommendations.
HTML 4.01 Specification (Errata): This specification defines the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the publishing language of the World Wide Web. This specification defines HTML 4.01, which is a subversion of HTML 4.
HTML 3.2 Reference Specification: The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used to create hypertext documents that are portable from one platform to another. HTML documents are SGML documents.
XHTML^(TM) 1.1 - Module-based XHTML (Errata): This Recommendation defines a new XHTML document type that is based upon the module framework and modules defined in Modularization of XHTML.
XHTML^(TM) 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition) (Errata): This specification defines the Second Edition of XHTML 1.0, a reformulation of HTML 4 as an XML 1.0 application, and three DTDs corresponding to the ones defined by HTML 4.

Concerning the different methods of authentication, Apache follows the following IETF recommendations:

RFC 2617 (Draft standard): "HTTP/1.0", includes the specification for a Basic Access Authentication scheme.