Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP): A Reference Guide: A Reference Guide

"This book...offers inside insights (by two of the SCTP designers) into the design of the protocol and discusses why the protocol operates as it does. This insight takes much of the 'black magic' out of SCTP and makes the protocol more accessible."
--From the Foreword by Mark Allman

Named one of the Top 10 Hottest Technologies of 2001 by Telecommunications Magazine, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is considered by many to be the TCP of the future. Originally designed for Internet telephony, SCTP has also proven itself a superb general purpose transport protocol for IP network data communications. More robust and secure than TCP, SCTP is the technology of choice for building next generation commercial grade infrastructures for telecommunications and e-commerce. Anyone involved with the technical aspects of Internet communications should have a working knowledge of this new transmission protocol, which is rapidly being adopted by standardization bodies and networking organizations.

Written by the creators of SCTP, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP): A Reference Guideis a comprehensive, practical, guide to SCTP technology. Examining the protocol in depth, the book provides useful perspective on design rationale and highlights SCTP's improvements over TCP in the areas of security and reliability. The book also demonstrates how to take full advantage of SCTP to make IP-based communications more reliable and robust.

Topics covered include:

• An item-by-item comparison between the functions of SCTP and TCP/UDP
• SCTP packet formats
• Setup and closing of an association
• User data transfer
• Congestion control and avoidance, covering the SCTP Congestion Control Algorithm
• Failure detection and recovery, covering the interaction with multihoming and route arrangements
• "Out-of-the-blue" SCTP packets and verification tag rules
• IANA and future extension of SCTP
• A preview of the proposed SCTP Socket API extension
• Use of Streams in SCTP, featuring file transfer, call control, and Web browser applications

Numerous examples and diagrams throughout the book clarify important concepts and techniques. The final chapter presents a user space implementation of SCTP, and the accompanying CD-ROM contains the open source code for this implementation.

An important complement to the official IETF standards specification, this book is required reading for all Internet programmers, developers, managers, and implementors of SCTP.

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Randall R. Stewart, with Qiaobing Xie, is the designer of the SCTP protocol. Mr. Stewart originally invented the protocol while at Motorola. Subsequently, Mr. Stewart and Dr. Xie worked together to perfect it and submit it to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the leading Internet technical standards body. Both men are the principal authors and editors of the protocol drafts. They also developed the reference implementation. Mr. Stewart is a Senior Engineer at Cisco Systems.

Qiaobing Xie, with Randall R. Stewart, is designer of the SCTP protocol. Mr. Stewart originally invented the protocol while at Motorola. Subsequently, Dr. Xie and Mr. Stewart worked together to perfect the protocol and submit it to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the leading Internet technical standards body. Both men are the principal authors and editors of the protocol drafts. They also developed the reference implementation. Dr. Xie is a Principal Staff Engineer at Motorola.

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