23.4 SCTP: Message Boundaries Each Message Is Independent of Any Other Message. This Is A
23.4 SCTP: Message Boundaries Each Message Is Independent of Any Other Message. This Is A
4 SCTP
Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is a new reliable, message-oriented transport layer protocol. SCTP, however, is mostly designed for Internet applications that have recently been introduced. These new applications, such as IUA (ISDN over IP), M2UA and M3UA (telephony signaling), H.248 (media gateway control), H.323 (IP telephony), and SIP (IP telephony), need a more sophisticated service than TCP can provide. SCTP provides this enhanced performance and reliability. We briefly compare UDP, TCP, and SCTP:
o SCTP combines the best features of UDP and TCP. SCTP is a reliable messageoriented
protocol. It preserves the message boundaries and at the same time detects lost data, duplicate data, and out-of-order data. It also has congestion control and flow control mechanisms. Later we will see that SCTP has other innovative features unavailable in UDP and TCP.
SCTP is a message-oriented, reliable protocol that combines the best features ofUDP and TCP.
SCTP Services
Before we discuss the operation of SCTP, let us explain the services offered by SCTP to the application layer processes. Process-to-Process Communication SCTP uses all well-known ports in the TCP space. Table 23.4 lists some extra port numbers used by SCTP. Multiple Streams We learned in the previous section that TCP is a stream-oriented protocol. Each connection between a TCP client and a TCP server involves one single stream. The problem