RFC 3257 (rfc3257) - Page 2 of 13
Stream Control Transmission Protocol Applicability Statement
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 3257 SCTP Applicability Statement April 2002 1 Introduction SCTP is a reliable transport protocol [RFC 2960], which along with TCP [RFC 793], RTP [RFC 1889], and UDP [RFC 768], provides transport-layer services for upper layer protocols and services. UDP, RTP, TCP, and SCTP are currently the IETF standards-track transport-layer protocols. Each protocol has a domain of applicability and services it provides, albeit with some overlaps. By clarifying the situations where the functionality of these protocols are applicable, this document can guide implementers and protocol designers in selecting which protocol to use. Special attention is given to services SCTP provides which would make a decision to use SCTP the right one. Major functions provided by SCTP can be found in Appendix A. 1.1 Terminology The following terms are commonly identified in this work: Association: SCTP connection between two endpoints. Transport address: A combination of IP address and SCTP port number. Upper layer: The user of the SCTP protocol, which may be an adaptation layer, a session layer protocol, or the user application directly. Multihoming: Assigning more than one IP network interface to a single endpoint. 2 Transport protocols 2.1 TCP service model TCP is a connection-oriented (a.k.a., session-oriented) transport protocol. This means that it requires both the establishment of a connection prior to the exchange of application data and a connection tear-down to release system resources after the completion of data transfer. TCP is currently the most widely used connection-oriented transport protocol for the Internet. Coene Informational
