Protocol Comparison Matrix

Protocol	Year	Connection Model	Headers	Keep-Alive	Content Negotiation	Status
HTTP/0.9	1991	Stateless, Single Request	None	No	No	Deprecated
HTTP/1.0	1996	Stateless, Per-Request	Basic (GET/POST)	Optional (Extensions)	Limited	Obsolete
HTTP/1.1	1997	Persistent, Pipelining	Full (Host, Cache, Range)	Default	Yes (Accept, Vary)	Archived/Superseded
Gopher	1991	Text Menu, TCP 70	Selector + Type Char	No	No	Archived
FTP	1971	Dual Channel (Ctrl/Data)	Yes (AUTH, PASS, TYPE)	Yes (Control)	Binary/ASCII	Active (Limited)
WAIS	1990	Query-Response (Mink7)	System/Source Identifiers	No	Index-Based	Superseded

Protocol Reference Cards

HTTP/0.9

1991

Single command: GET /
No status codes or headers
Assumed HTML response
Connection closed immediately

                            # Client Request

                            GET /index.html

                            # Server Response

                            <html><head>...</html>

Archive Size: 42k pages View Spec →

HTTP/1.0

1996

Introduced request/response headers
Status codes (200, 301, 404, 500)
Connection: close (default)
Basic MIME type support

                            GET /about.html HTTP/1.0

                            Host: archive.1990web.org

                            HTTP/1.0 200 OK

                            Content-Type: text/html

Archive Size: 1.2M pages View Spec →

HTTP/1.1

1997

Persistent connections by default
Host header required (virtual hosting)
Pipelining & chunked transfer
Advanced caching & content negotiation

                            GET /gallery HTTP/1.1

                            Host: retro.example.com

                            Accept-Encoding: gzip

                            HTTP/1.1 200 OK

                            Transfer-Encoding: chunked

Archive Size: 2.8M pages View Spec →

Gopher

1991

Hierarchical text menu system
Type character selector (i, 0, 1, t, g, h)
Predecessor to the World Wide Web
No hypertext linking

                            # Menu Entry Format

                            1 (Dir)Computer Science Info::gopher://dept.edu/1/7

                            i (Text)Read Me First::gopher://dept.edu/0/readme

Archive Size: 850k menus View Spec →

FTP

1971

Dual TCP connections (21 ctrl, 20 data)
Anonymous access popularized file sharing
Binary vs ASCII mode transfer
Directory listing & recursive download

                            220 Welcome to archive.1990web.org FTP

                            USER anonymous

                            331 Please specify password.

                            PASS user@example.com

                            230 Login successful.

Archive Size: 340k mirrors View Spec →

WAIS / Mink7

1990

Wide Area Information Server protocol
Query-based document retrieval
Proprietary indexing (Dialog, OCLC)
Superseded by HTTP + search engines

                            # Mink7 Query Structure

                            GET search

                            System-Name: WATERS

                            Profile: "computer science" -jargon

                            Sort: relevance

Archive Size: 120k indices View Spec →

Researcher Note

The transition from Gopher and FTP-based resource sharing to HTTP/1.0 represented a paradigm shift in how information was structured and accessed. Our archive preserves the exact wire-format requests and responses of each protocol era, allowing digital historians to analyze payload sizes, header evolution, and connection patterns across the 1990–1999 window.

→ Access raw packet captures: /docs/captures/1995-1999
→ Download protocol spec PDFs: /docs/specs/iso