416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable - Client Error Response Status Code

Example Use

A server may return a 416 response status code when a client unsuccesfully attempts to request a range or portion of data. The most common reason is if the range requested does not exist.

The server should return the length of the resource in the Content-Range header. Example: Content-Range: bytes */30000

Official Definition

The 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) status code indicates that none of the ranges in the request's Range header field (Section 3.1) overlap the current extent of the selected resource or that the set of ranges requested has been rejected due to invalid ranges or an excessive request of small or overlapping ranges.

For byte ranges, failing to overlap the current extent means that the first-byte-pos of all of the byte-range-spec values were greater than the current length of the selected representation. When this status code is generated in response to a byte-range request, the sender SHOULD generate a Content-Range header field specifying the current length of the selected representation (Section 4.2).

For example:

HTTP/1.1 416 Range Not Satisfiable  
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:41:54 GMT  
Content-Range: bytes */47022

Note: Because servers are free to ignore Range, many implementations will simply respond with the entire selected representation in a 200 (OK) response. That is partly because most clients are prepared to receive a 200 (OK) to complete the task (albeit less efficiently) and partly because clients might not stop making an invalid partial request until they have received a complete representation. Thus, clients cannot depend on receiving a 416 (Range Not Satisfiable) response even when it is most appropriate.