HTTP 206 – Partial Content
Used when the client requested a range of a resource with a Range header.
Common use case
Powers HTTP range requests: resuming interrupted downloads, and letting video/audio players seek to a specific point without re-downloading the whole file.
Example
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Content-Range: bytes 200-999/1000
History
Introduced in HTTP/1.1 (RFC 2068, 1997) alongside the Range and Content-Range headers.
Did you know?
Video streaming and download managers rely almost entirely on 206 responses - without it, seeking a video would require re-fetching the whole file from the start.