Why “Content-Length: 0” in POST requests?

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Internet Explorer does not send form fields if they are posted from an authenticated site (NTLM) to a non-authenticated site (anonymous).

This is feature for challange-response situations (NTLM- or Kerberos- secured web sites) where IE can expect that the first POST request immediately leads to an HTTP 401 Authentication Required response (which includes a challenge), and only the second POST request (which includes the response to the challange) will actually be accepted. In these situations IE does not upload the possibly large request body with the first request for performance reasons. Thanks to EricLaw for posting that bit of information in the comments.

This behavior occurs every time an HTTP POST is made from a NTLM authenticated (i.e. Intranet) page to a non-authenticated (i.e. Internet) page, or if the non-authenticated page is part of a frameset, where the frameset page is authenticated.

The work-around is either to use a GET request as the form method, or to make sure the non-authenticated page is opened in a fresh tab/window (favorite/link target) without a partly authenticated frameset. As soon as the authentication model for the whole window is consistent, IE will start to send form contents again.

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