> GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
> Host: example.com
< HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
< Content-length: 0
< Location: https://example.com/index.html
On the other hand, on a typical secured WiFi connection over TCP over an Ethernet connection, like 10 times more complicated stuff is going on in protocols and the software stack. It’s not as if we went from bit banging HTTP directly down an Ethernet cable to a hopelessly complex stack of software; we just added another element of complexity at the application layer in exchange for real security and privacy benefits. Example.com doesn’t need it but it has become a best practice for good reason so it is used on most of the net even when not strictly necessary.
Enforcing HTTPS is a best practice because an absurdly overwhelming majority of user agents, like 4 or 5 nines of them, support HTTPS and the redirect ensures they use HTTPS and makes downgrade attacks a little more involved.
Over the past decade I've helped maybe 100 small businesses set up internet presence, and I promise you none of them understand https or set it up correctly at first, despite often paying for it from hosting providers like Godaddy.
This isn't the fault of the engineers behind implementing it; it was necessary of course. But if the web were a perfect authoritarian regime we could have just saved us all the headache and dropped http altogether, thus avoiding this bureaucratic protocol redirecting mess.
I would be very interested to read about why that was not done actually. (I'm sure there were reasons)
> the following second level domain names reserved which can be used as examples.
> example.com
$ telnet example.com 80
Trying 2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946...
Connected to example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...
Content-Length: 1256
...