ROBOT.md

HTTP/2.0 Probe Robot FAQ

This page is for server administrators that are curious about the requests generated by one of the tools in this repository.

Why did you access my site?

Hello! The robot that accessed your site is a test tool used by some members of the IETF HTTPbis Working Group.

We're gathering information about how real Web servers behave, to help us develop the next version of HTTP, HTTP/2.0 (based upon SPDY).

Generally, we're trying to find out how to upgrade HTTP/1.1 safely to HTTP/2.0.

Is this an attack?

No!

How often will you access my site?

Very rarely, in general. The traffic you're seeing is generated by a command-line tool that's run by hand, not by a "headless" process. As such, you might see a few requests together (when one of us runs a few subsequent tests), and then nothing for long periods of time.

We shouldn't ever access any one IP address more than once every few seconds (and that would be rare).

How long will this go on?

We expect to have gathered the data we need by mid-2013, probably much sooner. After that, you shouldn't see any requests from this robot.

Do you respect robots.txt?

Because we only make one request at a time, and because we need as large a sampling of Web servers as possible, we don't use robots.txt.

Who can I contact?

If you still have concerns, please contact the Working Group chair, Mark Nottingham.

Thanks!