SCTP

A single term or abbreviation can be broken down to name several things, as people have a tendency to make the short form for anything that is difficult to pronounce or the name is too large. Same is the case with this term, as this term can be used to name several things depending upon the perspective it is used in. This article will deal with this term with respect to the networking world. In the networking world the term SCTP stands for Stream Control Transmission Protocol. This technology as suggested by the name is the transport layer protocol used in the computing and networking world.

The role of this protocol is quite similar to the role of the UDP or user Datagram protocol and TCP or Transmission control protocol, however, the major difference between this one protocol and the rest of the two are that this protocol is made having the features from both of the protocols, so that it can perform better in the networking world. This features it has from the other two protocols are; SCTP is message oriented like the UDP and this protocol also ensure the reliable in-sequence transport of the messages even with the congestion control like the TCP.

This protocol was introduced and defined by the IETF signaling transport in the year 2000, hence, this is relatively newer protocol as compared to the TCP and UDP. After the introduction of this protocol, the job of maintaining this protocol was given to the IETF Transport Area working group. This protocol comes in two different RFCs. The RFC 4960 is the RFC which defines this protocol while the RFC 3286 is the RFC which give the detailed introduction of this protocol to the world. The structure of this protocol is much simpler than the TCP packets. The SCTP data packets are divided in to two parts, the first one is the common header part and the second one is the data chunks part.