206 Partial Content

What 206 means

Sent when the request had a Range header and the server supports ranges. Video players, download managers and resumable downloads depend on it.

Many 206 lines in an access log for one file are normal: a browser fetching a video requests it in chunks.

Common causes

• A client asked for part of a file with Range: bytes=…

How to fix it

• If seeking in a video does not work, the server or CDN is not honouring Range; make sure it returns Accept-Ranges: bytes and 206 for range requests.

What it looks like

A typical response:

HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Content-Range: bytes 0-1023/146515
Content-Length: 1024
Accept-Ranges: bytes

The same event in an nginx access log (the status is the number after the request line):

203.0.113.7 - - [10/Sep/2026:10:12:01 +0000] "GET /media/intro.mp4 HTTP/1.1" 206 153 "-" "Mozilla/5.0"

Check it with curl

-i prints the status line and headers, and -w '%{http_code}' prints only the number, which is handy in scripts and health checks. Replace the URL with yours:

curl -i -H 'Range: bytes=0-1023' https://example.com/media/intro.mp4

Compare what curl sees with what the browser sees. A different status from the same URL usually means a cache, a CDN edge or a cookie is in the way.

Investigating a run of 206s? Paste the log excerpt into Log Share to get line numbers, highlighting and an expiring link for whoever is on call with you.

Related status codes

• 200OK: The request succeeded and the response carries the result.
• 416Range Not Satisfiable: the requested byte range is outside the file.

FAQ