"Wide load" status code(s)?

[Petite Abeille]

> On Jun 10, 2020, at 21:57, solderpunk <solderpunk at SDF.ORG> wrote:
> 
> Yes, of course, the client can always drop the connection whenever,
> whyever.  But if your goal is to conserve limited or expensive network
> traffic, being able to sever the connection immediately after seeing the
> first two bytes of the header will be much more effective than
> downloading the first MiB of data and then saying "Nope, I can't afford
> to finish this" and then throwing away that already-downloaded MiB.

Perhaps servers could introduce a slight delay between sending the status line and the content itself.

That way, a client may have enough time to drop the connection before the server has actually started to saturate the link with content.

This may address Peter Vernigorov showstopper:

"I believe that a status code is too late to let user know that the file is large. Bytes are already being transferred and received by user’s OS, even if client is not reading them yet. By the time any of this information is displayed to the user, and the time it takes them to react, damage has already been done."