I basically lived in Wire shark for a couple of years working for a voip company and still use stuff like curl all the time and I don't think I could walk through an http request of the top of my head.

GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n and some kind of sensible response is not too much to expect someone to know. HTTP is super easy and I see the HTTP transaction test as "did you ever get curious as to how exactly a core part of the current Internet actually works". I'm sure that there are app developers out there who can spin crud stuff all day and have no idea about this, just as there are curious people who couldn't stand up todomvc to save their life, but in general, all of the most talented people I've worked with knew their stuff front to back, and had at least a few areas of expertise.

CGI is also cool to learn about the workings of, since it almost seems too simple.

> I see the HTTP transaction test as "did you ever get curious as to how exactly a core part of the current Internet actually works".

Sure I did.

Then I forgot most of the details because they didn't matter, and I knew I could look them up quickly if I ever needed to write a HTTP client/server for some reason.

You would've gotten it wrong though!

You need two newlines to finis the request, plus the HTTP 1.1 standard requires clients to send a Host: header for all requests.

Not saying every interviewer would care about that in an early screening process.

if you answer "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n" I'm going to ask you if you left anything out.

Because you did: after that you have to provide a Host: <hostname>.

But could you describe the general structure?

Yeah expecting many people to be able write out a complete http request from memory without a reference to look at. But the general structure of a http request is something so basic to web development that asking what the structure of a http request looks like isn't an unreasonable expectation.

Request line (method, uri), header(s), empty, body...

There is some truth to the saying that some people don't have ten years experience, they have two years of experience five times in a row.

Learning to use wireshark or tcpdump is a power tool that does show whether you got more experience in understanding the lower levels, or stayed at requirements-and-tests. (Not necessarily bad, but a good "fork" to jump off from)