An HTTP method which clients can use to get information about a server but without getting the content or causing any other effect. The URI can be an asterisk, and that means that que client is asking about the whole server, and not about a resource in particular. This method can be used to find out which things a server supports, e.g. if it supports HTTP/1.1.
$ telnet www.everything2.com 80
Trying 206.170.14.131...
Connected to www.everything2.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 03:20:39 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) Debian/GNU mod_ssl/2.4.10 OpenSSL/0.9.4 mod_perl/1.21_03-dev
Content-Length: 0
Allow: GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, TRACE
Connection: close
Connection closed by foreign host.
$ _