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World Congress 2023 • Sep 27, 2023

Brewing Tea over the Internet

Imran Nazar

To mock HTTP's chaotic architectural bloat, engineers drafted a joke protocol for brewing coffee. Discover the hilarious history and real networking lessons behind the "418 I'm a teapot" error.

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#1 about 3 min

The history and evolution of early HTTP drafts

The initial text-based HTTP protocol lacked paths and error codes.

#2 about 3 min

Standardizing the HTTP protocol and adding response headers

New verbs, paths, and status codes transformed HTTP into a programmatic protocol.

#3 about 4 min

Reusing email software standards for HTTP file uploads

The inclusion of email MIME types enabled multipart form data and file attachments over HTTP.

#4 about 4 min

The coffee pot control protocol and brew verb

An April Fools internet standard formalized ridiculous extensions to HTTP network requests.

#5 about 2 min

The origin of the HTTP 418 teapot error

The introduction of the teapot error code became a beloved engineering community joke.

#6 about 2 min

Extending the coffee protocol for tea appliance hardware

The coffee protocol was eventually modified to support tea brewing with selection and rejection codes.

#7 about 2 min

REST principles and inappropriate HTTP response status codes

Using document verbs for database rows contrasts with returning success codes for internal errors.

#8 about 3 min

Reviewing other humorous internet engineering standard network RFCs

Joke standards mock concepts like firewall intention checking and extreme physical packet transport.

#9 about 2 min

Physical hardware implementations of the coffee appliance protocol

Hackathon projects have successfully built working appliances driven by the humorous protocol.

#10 about 3 min

Audience questions on avian carriers and binary HTTP

Discussions explore carrier pigeon packet loss mechanics and binary protocol formats.

Matching moments

2:59 min

Representational state transfer and the adoption of HTTP verbs

James Seconde · WWC 2023

35 sec

Core principles of the REST architectural style

Shweta Palande · LIVE

1:42 min

Questions on HTTP QUERY and AI standard timelines

Christian Liebel Christian Liebel · WWC Europe 2026

6:30 min

Deprecating old email protocols and preserving niche online communities

Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

2:55 min

Historical evolution from remote procedure calls to modern protocols

Alexis Yushin Alexis Yushin · WWC 2024

3:04 min

Supporting modern network protocols in foundational libraries

Daniel Stenberg · Coffee With Developers

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