RFC 3257 (rfc3257) - Page 2 of 13

Stream Control Transmission Protocol Applicability Statement

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