This article applies to:

• SWG 10.x
• SWG 11.x

Question:

• Will an SWG proxy honor HTTP HEAD requests ?

Information:

An HTTP HEAD request is very similar to an HTTP GET request, the difference being that it asks the Server to return the response headers only, and not the actual resource itself.

This method is useful when the resource needs to be evaluated without actually downloading it, saving bandwidth for example. 

SWG supports the HTTP HEAD method without any specific configuration changes, and by default the transactions shown below are allowed:

If needed, a custom rule may be added to the policy to block HTTP HEAD requests, using the HTTP Method condition:

This is how an SWG proxy works when an HTTP HEAD request is blocked by the policy: