Stream Control Transmission Protocol

SCTP stands for Stream Control Transmission Protocol. It is a new transport protocol developed within the IETF and standardized in October of 2000. After 3 years SCTP is finally becoming available on Linux (via the lk-sctp project) and many other Operating Systems such as BSD, Solaris and HP-UX.

In this tutorial I intend to discuss both the basics of SCTP as well as the current user interface i.e. the sockets API. The following list is some of the ground I intend to cover:

o SCTP terminology - whats an endpoint, association etc.

o SCTP association setup

o SCTP data transfer and congestion control

o SCTP termination

o SCTP extensions

o Difference between UDP, TCP and SCTP

o Advantages of using SCTP

o Sockets API including:

- The two different programming styles available

- New function calls to utilize SCTP\'s advanced features

- Socket options

- Porting TCP applications

The first part of this tutorial I designed as a two day course. I am also adding more details on the socket api and then condensing it all down into a four hour tutorial. This means I will attempt to cover a lot of ground in a short time so hold on to your seats :-D