HTTP byte range protocol client behaviour on iPad/iPhone

I was testing a HTTP servlet implementation (kindly shared by BalusC) which supports HTTP byte range requests.

I have found some peculiar differences between different HTTP clients, and was wondering if I am not missing anything. I have used a >2G mp4 video file for my tests and was capturing packets with Wireshark. This is roughly what happens:

• Samsung Galaxy SII:

  • HTTP GET request for file comes, asking for byte range [0; <almost the end of the file>]
  • server responds, starts to stream the file

  • each subsequent chunk is served within the bounds of the same HTTP response. No new HTTP request is sent (unless the video is fast forwarded to a certain position). Streaming code chunk for this is quite simple, it reads RandomAccessFile input and writes to OutputStream output via byte[] buffer:

    while ((read = input.read(buffer)) > 0) {
        output.write(buffer, 0, read);
    }
    

• iPad 1
  • HTTP GET request for file comes, asking for byte range [0; <almost the end of the file>]
  • server responds, starts to stream the file
  • iPad gets a chunk or two and then unilaterally decides to stop accepting bytes from the server and issues a separate GET request for the next chunk of the file. New range boundaries are e.g. [100, almost the end of the file]. The video is shown OK.
  • cycle repeats again from step 2. Left boundary always moves towards the end of the file.

I didn't investigate how exactly the connection is terminated. It could be that iPad stops sending TCP ACK packets, I suppose this doesn't really matter that much.

My problem is