[vlc-devel] byte ranges in vlc HTTP requests

[Anthony Loiseau]

Hi,

I never look at HTTP access on VLC 1.0.0, but it should be close to 0.9.

VLC ask for 0- range for some reasons:
- if the HTTP server handle ranges, a 206 ret code must be given. VLC
know by this code that the stream is seekable (because range are
accepted by the server).

- HTTP specifications[1] says the entire file must be returned in case
of "0-" range requests, so "0-" is interesting. TCP stream remains open
as for a download request and VLC read this socket at the time it needs
to render the playback.
 Have you tested your server against this statement [1]? Have you tested
to keep a socket opened for a long time on your server?


To understand better the HTTP access process, you can read its code [2].
It is easy to read.

For what I remember, it only request for another range if the socket
have been closed (not always and maybe only for Icecast) or if the user
use seek feature. To see if it is a seek, look at your server logs to
see if the first chunk was 198511 bytes long or not.


Regards,
Anthony

1:
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.35.1
2:
http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=blob;f=modules/access/http.c;h=fdcee422c41aaa4b5c3be971ad906af5d91efeb4;hb=HEAD


On Sun, 2009-07-12 at 20:26 +0200, Rainer Joswig wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to support the use of VLC with a web server (CL-HTTP) that  
> handles byte ranges.
> Currently I have some trouble when I want to display a movie that  
> comes from that webserver.
> The transport is going over HTTP 1.1.
> 
> VLC requests a byte range of   0-  and for the next request of   
> 198512-  .
> 
> Why doesn't it request byte ranges of  0-198511 and 198512-397023  ?
> Why not ask the web server for a specific byte range like above?
> 
> How is VLC's current transfer method supposed to work? Is there a  
> description of what is implemented?
> 
> VLC requests bytes from 0 to the end of the data source, but then ends  
> the transfer some point (?) and requests a new range from some number  
> to the end?
> Is that a good idea?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rainer Joswig
> 
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