HTTP Cookie Semantics
HTTP cookies are not a part of RFC 2616, but they are one of the more important protocol extensions used on the Web. The cookie mechanism allows servers to store short, opaque name=value pairs in the browser by sending a Set-Cookie response header and to receive them back on future requests via the client-supplied Cookie parameter. Cookies are by far the most popular way to maintain sessions and authenticate user requests; they are one of the four canonical forms of ambient authority[22] on the Web (the other forms being built-in HTTP authentication, IP checking, and client certificates).
Originally implemented in Netscape by Lou Montulli around 1994, and described in a brief four-page draft document,[126] the mechanism has ...
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