The future of SCTP

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

SCTP is a relatively new protocol, considering that it became an RFC in October 2000. Since then, it has found its way into all major operating systems, including GNU/Linux, BSD, and Solaris. It's also available for the Microsoft® Windows® operating systems as a third-party commercial package.

Along with availability, applications will begin to use SCTP as their primary transport. Traditional applications such as FTP and HTTP have been built on the features of SCTP. Other protocols are using SCTP, such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the Common Channel Signaling System No. 7 (SS7). Commercially, you can find SCTP in Cisco's IOS.

With the inclusion of SCTP into the 2.6 Linux kernel, it's now possible to build and deploy highly available and reliable networked applications. As an IP-based protocol, SCTP is a seamless replacement for TCP and UDP but also extends new services, such as multi-homing, multi-streaming, and increased security. Now that you've seen some of the high-level features of SCTP, explore its other capabilities. The Linux Kernel SCTP project (lksctp) provides API extensions and documentation that will help you on your way.