Link: http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/83
Origin: http://www.w3.org/mid/47040E65.9070001@gmx.de
Component: p2-semantics
The following text was in RFC2068, but dropped from RFC2616;
If a proxy receives a request without any path in the Request-URI and the method specified is capable of supporting the asterisk form of request, then the last proxy on the request chain MUST forward the request with "*" as the final Request-URI. For example, the request OPTIONS http://www.ics.uci.edu:8001 HTTP/1.1 would be forwarded by the proxy as OPTIONS * HTTP/1.1 Host: www.ics.uci.edu:8001 after connecting to port 8001 of host "www.ics.uci.edu".
This makes it impossible for a proxy to forward an OPTIONS * request, because "*" is not a valid URI (as opposed to "/*"). One solution would be to reinstate the text, but that would require proxies to understand a method-specific case.