mod_cluster NodePingUtil ping request is not valid

The static ClientRequest PING_REQUEST, defined in NodePingUtil.java, is not valid.

RFC 2616 (Hypertext Transfer Protocol – HTTP/1.1) dictates that a client that sends an HTTP/1.1 request MUST send a Host header. If the Host header is not sent, the server response MUST be a 400 (Bad Request) error message.
And exactly that happens (tested with JBoss EAP 6.4 backend):

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 07:44:19 GMT
Connection: close

There are two ways to solve this, either change the protocol to HTTP/1.0 or set the Host header (to localhost).

Apache httpd mod_cluster uses the HTTP/1.0 protocol for a ping request.
I would prefer to explicitly set the protocol to HTTP/1.1 and set the Host header because it will keep the connection alive.

Please let me know which option is most prefered.

References:
https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec5.html#sec5.2
https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec19.html#sec19.6.1.1