SCTP

Stream Control Transmission Protocol

Nimish Vartak CS, UMBC

SCTP - Agenda
Motivation Overview of SCTP Features of SCTP Current Implementations Comparison with other protocols

Nimish Vartak

SCTP Motivation
IP reference model

TCP

UDP

Nimish Vartak

SCTP Motivation (contd )

New applications Migration from PSTN to Packet based Internet Telephony signaling messages Shortcomings of existing protocols TCP head-of-line blocking Byte-oriented, not message-oriented Multi-homing support not built in DoS attack prone UDP No Reliability Absence of congestion control Absence of flow control
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SCTP Overview
SCTP is a reliable transport protocol operating on top of a connectionless packet network such as IP. RFC 2960 Has built-in support for multi-homed hosts Is message-based conserves the message boundaries. Classifies messages as: sequenced delivery of user messages within multiple streams with an option for un-ordered delivery of individual user messages Additional security mechanisms

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SCTP Overview (contd )

Message Format

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SCTP Key Features

Connection set-up Multi-streaming Multi-homing Selective ACKs in Data sending Connection shut-down

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SCTP Features (contd )

Connection setup
(SYN)
(SYN-ACK)

INIT
INIT-ACK

COOKIE-ECHO COOKIE-ACK

End-Point A

End-Point Z

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SCTP Features (contd )

Multi-streaming

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SCTP Features (contd )

Multi-homing

Internet

End-Point A

End-Point Z

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SCTP Features (contd )

SACK in Data sending

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SCTP Features (contd )

Connection close
SHUTDOWN

SHUTDOWN-ACK SHUTDOWN-CMPL

End-Point A No Half Closed State

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End-Point Z

SCTP Special Features

Heartbeat keep-alive mechanism Selective acknowledgments Security perspective Connection based DoS attack prevention Data based IPSec under SCTP TLS over SCTP

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SCTP Implementations
Implementation
Kernel Level - Highly scalable
Platforms: Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Unix, Several Implementations in progress in the The Linux Kernel SCTP

User Level - Easy maintenance

Randall Stewart's reference implementation http://www.sctp.org/ Ported to many platforms - Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, AIX, Tru64(Compaq), Windows, etc.

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SCTP Comparison
Comparison of features with TCP and UDP

Nimish Vartak * Courtesy Addison Wesley

SCTP Summary
Well suited for Multimedia Like TCP Provides connection establishment Ensures Reliability Provisions for ordered and un-ordered data

Provides Congestion Control

In addition to TCP features Provides multi-homing

Provides multi-streaming
Has security features
Nimish Vartak

SCTP References
Computer.org
(http://www.computer.org/internet/v5n6/w6wire.htm)

IETF RFC 2960

(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2960.txt)

Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP): A Reference Guide, R. Stewart and Q. Xie, Addison Wesley IBM.com
(http://oss.software.ibm.com/linux/presentations/lwce2002/Chats/SCTP/SCTP-LWE.pdf)

Nimish Vartak

SCTP

Thank You.

Nimish Vartak