Tech-invite3GPPspaceIETFspace
959493929190898887868584838281807978777675747372717069686766656463626160595857565554535251504948474645444342414039383736353433323130292827262524232221201918171615141312111009080706050403020100
in Index   Prev   Next

RFC 4960

Stream Control Transmission Protocol

Pages: 152
Obsoletes:  29603309
Obsoleted by:  9260
Updated by:  6096633570538899
Part 1 of 7 – Pages 1 to 15
None   None   Next

Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 1
Network Working Group                                    R. Stewart, Ed.
Request for Comments: 4960                                September 2007
Obsoletes: 2960, 3309
Category: Standards Track


                  Stream Control Transmission Protocol

Status of This Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

This document obsoletes RFC 2960 and RFC 3309. It describes the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). SCTP is designed to transport Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) signaling messages over IP networks, but is capable of broader applications. SCTP is a reliable transport protocol operating on top of a connectionless packet network such as IP. It offers the following services to its users: -- acknowledged error-free non-duplicated transfer of user data, -- data fragmentation to conform to discovered path MTU size, -- sequenced delivery of user messages within multiple streams, with an option for order-of-arrival delivery of individual user messages, -- optional bundling of multiple user messages into a single SCTP packet, and -- network-level fault tolerance through supporting of multi-homing at either or both ends of an association. The design of SCTP includes appropriate congestion avoidance behavior and resistance to flooding and masquerade attacks.
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 2

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ....................................................5 1.1. Motivation .................................................5 1.2. Architectural View of SCTP .................................6 1.3. Key Terms ..................................................6 1.4. Abbreviations .............................................10 1.5. Functional View of SCTP ...................................10 1.5.1. Association Startup and Takedown ...................11 1.5.2. Sequenced Delivery within Streams ..................12 1.5.3. User Data Fragmentation ............................12 1.5.4. Acknowledgement and Congestion Avoidance ...........12 1.5.5. Chunk Bundling .....................................13 1.5.6. Packet Validation ..................................13 1.5.7. Path Management ....................................13 1.6. Serial Number Arithmetic ..................................14 1.7. Changes from RFC 2960 .....................................15 2. Conventions ....................................................15 3. SCTP Packet Format .............................................15 3.1. SCTP Common Header Field Descriptions .....................16 3.2. Chunk Field Descriptions ..................................17 3.2.1. Optional/Variable-Length Parameter Format ..........19 3.2.2. Reporting of Unrecognized Parameters ...............21 3.3. SCTP Chunk Definitions ....................................21 3.3.1. Payload Data (DATA) (0) ............................22 3.3.2. Initiation (INIT) (1) ..............................24 3.3.2.1. Optional/Variable-Length Parameters in INIT ........................27 3.3.3. Initiation Acknowledgement (INIT ACK) (2) ..........30 3.3.3.1. Optional or Variable-Length Parameters ....33 3.3.4. Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) (3) ...............34 3.3.5. Heartbeat Request (HEARTBEAT) (4) ..................38 3.3.6. Heartbeat Acknowledgement (HEARTBEAT ACK) (5) ......39 3.3.7. Abort Association (ABORT) (6) ......................40 3.3.8. Shutdown Association (SHUTDOWN) (7) ................41 3.3.9. Shutdown Acknowledgement (SHUTDOWN ACK) (8) ........41 3.3.10. Operation Error (ERROR) (9) .......................42 3.3.10.1. Invalid Stream Identifier (1) ............44 3.3.10.2. Missing Mandatory Parameter (2) ..........44 3.3.10.3. Stale Cookie Error (3) ...................45 3.3.10.4. Out of Resource (4) ......................45 3.3.10.5. Unresolvable Address (5) .................46 3.3.10.6. Unrecognized Chunk Type (6) ..............46 3.3.10.7. Invalid Mandatory Parameter (7) ..........47 3.3.10.8. Unrecognized Parameters (8) ..............47 3.3.10.9. No User Data (9) .........................48 3.3.10.10. Cookie Received While Shutting Down (10) ...............................48
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 3
                  3.3.10.11. Restart of an Association with
                             New Addresses (11) ......................49
                  3.3.10.12. User-Initiated Abort (12) ...............49
                  3.3.10.13. Protocol Violation (13) .................50
           3.3.11. Cookie Echo (COOKIE ECHO) (10) ....................50
           3.3.12. Cookie Acknowledgement (COOKIE ACK) (11) ..........51
           3.3.13. Shutdown Complete (SHUTDOWN COMPLETE) (14) ........51
   4. SCTP Association State Diagram .................................52
   5. Association Initialization .....................................56
      5.1. Normal Establishment of an Association ....................56
           5.1.1. Handle Stream Parameters ...........................58
           5.1.2. Handle Address Parameters ..........................58
           5.1.3. Generating State Cookie ............................61
           5.1.4. State Cookie Processing ............................62
           5.1.5. State Cookie Authentication ........................62
           5.1.6. An Example of Normal Association Establishment .....64
      5.2. Handle Duplicate or Unexpected INIT, INIT ACK,
           COOKIE ECHO, and ..........................................65
           5.2.1. INIT Received in COOKIE-WAIT or
                  COOKIE-ECHOED State (Item B) .......................66
           5.2.2. Unexpected INIT in States Other than
                  CLOSED, COOKIE-ECHOED, .............................66
           5.2.3. Unexpected INIT ACK ................................67
           5.2.4. Handle a COOKIE ECHO when a TCB Exists .............67
                  5.2.4.1. An Example of a Association Restart .......69
           5.2.5. Handle Duplicate COOKIE-ACK. .......................71
           5.2.6. Handle Stale COOKIE Error ..........................71
      5.3. Other Initialization Issues ...............................72
           5.3.1. Selection of Tag Value .............................72
      5.4. Path Verification .........................................72
   6. User Data Transfer .............................................73
      6.1. Transmission of DATA Chunks ...............................75
      6.2. Acknowledgement on Reception of DATA Chunks ...............78
           6.2.1. Processing a Received SACK .........................81
      6.3. Management of Retransmission Timer ........................83
           6.3.1. RTO Calculation ....................................83
           6.3.2. Retransmission Timer Rules .........................85
           6.3.3. Handle T3-rtx Expiration ...........................86
      6.4. Multi-Homed SCTP Endpoints ................................87
           6.4.1. Failover from an Inactive Destination Address ......88
      6.5. Stream Identifier and Stream Sequence Number ..............88
      6.6. Ordered and Unordered Delivery ............................88
      6.7. Report Gaps in Received DATA TSNs .........................89
      6.8. CRC32c Checksum Calculation ...............................90
      6.9. Fragmentation and Reassembly ..............................91
      6.10. Bundling .................................................92
   7. Congestion Control .............................................93
      7.1. SCTP Differences from TCP Congestion Control ..............94
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 4
      7.2. SCTP Slow-Start and Congestion Avoidance ..................95
           7.2.1. Slow-Start .........................................96
           7.2.2. Congestion Avoidance ...............................97
           7.2.3. Congestion Control .................................98
           7.2.4. Fast Retransmit on Gap Reports .....................98
      7.3. Path MTU Discovery .......................................100
   8. Fault Management ..............................................100
      8.1. Endpoint Failure Detection ...............................100
      8.2. Path Failure Detection ...................................101
      8.3. Path Heartbeat ...........................................102
      8.4. Handle "Out of the Blue" Packets .........................104
      8.5. Verification Tag .........................................105
           8.5.1. Exceptions in Verification Tag Rules ..............105
   9. Termination of Association ....................................106
      9.1. Abort of an Association ..................................107
      9.2. Shutdown of an Association ...............................107
   10. Interface with Upper Layer ...................................110
      10.1. ULP-to-SCTP .............................................110
      10.2. SCTP-to-ULP .............................................120
   11. Security Considerations ......................................123
      11.1. Security Objectives .....................................123
      11.2. SCTP Responses to Potential Threats .....................124
           11.2.1. Countering Insider Attacks .......................124
           11.2.2. Protecting against Data Corruption in the
                   Network ..........................................124
           11.2.3. Protecting Confidentiality .......................124
           11.2.4. Protecting against Blind
                   Denial-of-Service Attacks ........................125
                  11.2.4.1. Flooding ................................125
                  11.2.4.2. Blind Masquerade ........................126
                  11.2.4.3. Improper Monopolization of Services .....127
      11.3. SCTP Interactions with Firewalls ........................127
      11.4. Protection of Non-SCTP-Capable Hosts ....................128
   12. Network Management Considerations ............................128
   13. Recommended Transmission Control Block (TCB) Parameters ......129
      13.1. Parameters Necessary for the SCTP Instance ..............129
      13.2. Parameters Necessary per Association (i.e., the TCB) ....129
      13.3. Per Transport Address Data ..............................131
      13.4. General Parameters Needed ...............................132
   14. IANA Considerations ..........................................132
      14.1. IETF-defined Chunk Extension ............................132
      14.2. IETF-Defined Chunk Parameter Extension ..................133
      14.3. IETF-Defined Additional Error Causes ....................133
      14.4. Payload Protocol Identifiers ............................134
      14.5. Port Numbers Registry ...................................134
   15. Suggested SCTP Protocol Parameter Values .....................136
   16. Acknowledgements .............................................137
   Appendix A. Explicit Congestion Notification .....................139
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 5
   Appendix B. CRC32c Checksum Calculation ..........................140
   Appendix C. ICMP Handling ........................................142
   References .......................................................149
      Normative References ..........................................149
      Informative References ........................................150

1. Introduction

This section explains the reasoning behind the development of the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), the services it offers, and the basic concepts needed to understand the detailed description of the protocol. This document obsoletes [RFC2960] and [RFC3309].

1.1. Motivation

TCP [RFC0793] has performed immense service as the primary means of reliable data transfer in IP networks. However, an increasing number of recent applications have found TCP too limiting, and have incorporated their own reliable data transfer protocol on top of UDP [RFC0768]. The limitations that users have wished to bypass include the following: -- TCP provides both reliable data transfer and strict order-of- transmission delivery of data. Some applications need reliable transfer without sequence maintenance, while others would be satisfied with partial ordering of the data. In both of these cases, the head-of-line blocking offered by TCP causes unnecessary delay. -- The stream-oriented nature of TCP is often an inconvenience. Applications must add their own record marking to delineate their messages, and must make explicit use of the push facility to ensure that a complete message is transferred in a reasonable time. -- The limited scope of TCP sockets complicates the task of providing highly-available data transfer capability using multi-homed hosts. -- TCP is relatively vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks, such as SYN attacks. Transport of PSTN signaling across the IP network is an application for which all of these limitations of TCP are relevant. While this application directly motivated the development of SCTP, other applications may find SCTP a good match to their requirements.
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 6

1.2. Architectural View of SCTP

SCTP is viewed as a layer between the SCTP user application ("SCTP user" for short) and a connectionless packet network service such as IP. The remainder of this document assumes SCTP runs on top of IP. The basic service offered by SCTP is the reliable transfer of user messages between peer SCTP users. It performs this service within the context of an association between two SCTP endpoints. Section 10 of this document sketches the API that should exist at the boundary between the SCTP and the SCTP user layers. SCTP is connection-oriented in nature, but the SCTP association is a broader concept than the TCP connection. SCTP provides the means for each SCTP endpoint (Section 1.3) to provide the other endpoint (during association startup) with a list of transport addresses (i.e., multiple IP addresses in combination with an SCTP port) through which that endpoint can be reached and from which it will originate SCTP packets. The association spans transfers over all of the possible source/destination combinations that may be generated from each endpoint's lists. _____________ _____________ | SCTP User | | SCTP User | | Application | | Application | |-------------| |-------------| | SCTP | | SCTP | | Transport | | Transport | | Service | | Service | |-------------| |-------------| | |One or more ---- One or more| | | IP Network |IP address \/ IP address| IP Network | | Service |appearances /\ appearances| Service | |_____________| ---- |_____________| SCTP Node A |<-------- Network transport ------->| SCTP Node B Figure 1: An SCTP Association

1.3. Key Terms

Some of the language used to describe SCTP has been introduced in the previous sections. This section provides a consolidated list of the key terms and their definitions. o Active destination transport address: A transport address on a peer endpoint that a transmitting endpoint considers available for receiving user messages.
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 7
   o  Bundling: An optional multiplexing operation, whereby more than
      one user message may be carried in the same SCTP packet.  Each
      user message occupies its own DATA chunk.

   o  Chunk: A unit of information within an SCTP packet, consisting of
      a chunk header and chunk-specific content.

   o  Congestion window (cwnd): An SCTP variable that limits the data,
      in number of bytes, a sender can send to a particular destination
      transport address before receiving an acknowledgement.

   o  Cumulative TSN Ack Point: The TSN of the last DATA chunk
      acknowledged via the Cumulative TSN Ack field of a SACK.

   o  Idle destination address: An address that has not had user
      messages sent to it within some length of time, normally the
      HEARTBEAT interval or greater.

   o  Inactive destination transport address: An address that is
      considered inactive due to errors and unavailable to transport
      user messages.

   o  Message = user message: Data submitted to SCTP by the Upper Layer
      Protocol (ULP).

   o  Message Authentication Code (MAC): An integrity check mechanism
      based on cryptographic hash functions using a secret key.
      Typically, message authentication codes are used between two
      parties that share a secret key in order to validate information
      transmitted between these parties.  In SCTP, it is used by an
      endpoint to validate the State Cookie information that is returned
      from the peer in the COOKIE ECHO chunk.  The term "MAC" has
      different meanings in different contexts.  SCTP uses this term
      with the same meaning as in [RFC2104].

   o  Network Byte Order: Most significant byte first, a.k.a., big
      endian.

   o  Ordered Message: A user message that is delivered in order with
      respect to all previous user messages sent within the stream on
      which the message was sent.

   o  Outstanding TSN (at an SCTP endpoint): A TSN (and the associated
      DATA chunk) that has been sent by the endpoint but for which it
      has not yet received an acknowledgement.
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 8
   o  Path: The route taken by the SCTP packets sent by one SCTP
      endpoint to a specific destination transport address of its peer
      SCTP endpoint.  Sending to different destination transport
      addresses does not necessarily guarantee getting separate paths.

   o  Primary Path: The primary path is the destination and source
      address that will be put into a packet outbound to the peer
      endpoint by default.  The definition includes the source address
      since an implementation MAY wish to specify both destination and
      source address to better control the return path taken by reply
      chunks and on which interface the packet is transmitted when the
      data sender is multi-homed.

   o  Receiver Window (rwnd): An SCTP variable a data sender uses to
      store the most recently calculated receiver window of its peer, in
      number of bytes.  This gives the sender an indication of the space
      available in the receiver's inbound buffer.

   o  SCTP association: A protocol relationship between SCTP endpoints,
      composed of the two SCTP endpoints and protocol state information
      including Verification Tags and the currently active set of
      Transmission Sequence Numbers (TSNs), etc.  An association can be
      uniquely identified by the transport addresses used by the
      endpoints in the association.  Two SCTP endpoints MUST NOT have
      more than one SCTP association between them at any given time.

   o  SCTP endpoint: The logical sender/receiver of SCTP packets.  On a
      multi-homed host, an SCTP endpoint is represented to its peers as
      a combination of a set of eligible destination transport addresses
      to which SCTP packets can be sent and a set of eligible source
      transport addresses from which SCTP packets can be received.  All
      transport addresses used by an SCTP endpoint must use the same
      port number, but can use multiple IP addresses.  A transport
      address used by an SCTP endpoint must not be used by another SCTP
      endpoint.  In other words, a transport address is unique to an
      SCTP endpoint.

   o  SCTP packet (or packet): The unit of data delivery across the
      interface between SCTP and the connectionless packet network
      (e.g., IP).  An SCTP packet includes the common SCTP header,
      possible SCTP control chunks, and user data encapsulated within
      SCTP DATA chunks.

   o  SCTP user application (SCTP user): The logical higher-layer
      application entity which uses the services of SCTP, also called
      the Upper-Layer Protocol (ULP).
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 9
   o  Slow-Start Threshold (ssthresh): An SCTP variable.  This is the
      threshold that the endpoint will use to determine whether to
      perform slow start or congestion avoidance on a particular
      destination transport address.  Ssthresh is in number of bytes.

   o  Stream: A unidirectional logical channel established from one to
      another associated SCTP endpoint, within which all user messages
      are delivered in sequence except for those submitted to the
      unordered delivery service.

   Note: The relationship between stream numbers in opposite directions
   is strictly a matter of how the applications use them.  It is the
   responsibility of the SCTP user to create and manage these
   correlations if they are so desired.

   o  Stream Sequence Number: A 16-bit sequence number used internally
      by SCTP to ensure sequenced delivery of the user messages within a
      given stream.  One Stream Sequence Number is attached to each user
      message.

   o  Tie-Tags: Two 32-bit random numbers that together make a 64-bit
      nonce.  These tags are used within a State Cookie and TCB so that
      a newly restarting association can be linked to the original
      association within the endpoint that did not restart and yet not
      reveal the true Verification Tags of an existing association.

   o  Transmission Control Block (TCB): An internal data structure
      created by an SCTP endpoint for each of its existing SCTP
      associations to other SCTP endpoints.  TCB contains all the status
      and operational information for the endpoint to maintain and
      manage the corresponding association.

   o  Transmission Sequence Number (TSN): A 32-bit sequence number used
      internally by SCTP.  One TSN is attached to each chunk containing
      user data to permit the receiving SCTP endpoint to acknowledge its
      receipt and detect duplicate deliveries.

   o  Transport address: A transport address is traditionally defined by
      a network-layer address, a transport-layer protocol, and a
      transport-layer port number.  In the case of SCTP running over IP,
      a transport address is defined by the combination of an IP address
      and an SCTP port number (where SCTP is the transport protocol).

   o  Unacknowledged TSN (at an SCTP endpoint): A TSN (and the
      associated DATA chunk) that has been received by the endpoint but
      for which an acknowledgement has not yet been sent.  Or in the
      opposite case, for a packet that has been sent but no
      acknowledgement has been received.
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 10
   o  Unordered Message: Unordered messages are "unordered" with respect
      to any other message; this includes both other unordered messages
      as well as other ordered messages.  An unordered message might be
      delivered prior to or later than ordered messages sent on the same
      stream.

   o  User message: The unit of data delivery across the interface
      between SCTP and its user.

   o  Verification Tag: A 32-bit unsigned integer that is randomly
      generated.  The Verification Tag provides a key that allows a
      receiver to verify that the SCTP packet belongs to the current
      association and is not an old or stale packet from a previous
      association.

1.4. Abbreviations

MAC - Message Authentication Code [RFC2104] RTO - Retransmission Timeout RTT - Round-Trip Time RTTVAR - Round-Trip Time Variation SCTP - Stream Control Transmission Protocol SRTT - Smoothed RTT TCB - Transmission Control Block TLV - Type-Length-Value coding format TSN - Transmission Sequence Number ULP - Upper-Layer Protocol

1.5. Functional View of SCTP

The SCTP transport service can be decomposed into a number of functions. These are depicted in Figure 2 and explained in the remainder of this section.
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 11
                           SCTP User Application

            -----------------------------------------------------
             _____________                  ____________________
            |             |                | Sequenced Delivery |
            | Association |                |   within Streams   |
            |             |                |____________________|
            |   Startup   |
            |             |         ____________________________
            |     and     |        |    User Data Fragmentation |
            |             |        |____________________________|
            |   Takedown  |
            |             |         ____________________________
            |             |        |     Acknowledgement        |
            |             |        |          and               |
            |             |        |    Congestion Avoidance    |
            |             |        |____________________________|
            |             |
            |             |         ____________________________
            |             |        |       Chunk Bundling       |
            |             |        |____________________________|
            |             |
            |             |     ________________________________
            |             |    |      Packet Validation         |
            |             |    |________________________________|
            |             |
            |             |     ________________________________
            |             |    |     Path Management            |
            |_____________|    |________________________________|

              Figure 2: Functional View of the SCTP Transport Service

1.5.1. Association Startup and Takedown

An association is initiated by a request from the SCTP user (see the description of the ASSOCIATE (or SEND) primitive in Section 10). A cookie mechanism, similar to one described by Karn and Simpson in [RFC2522], is employed during the initialization to provide protection against synchronization attacks. The cookie mechanism uses a four-way handshake, the last two legs of which are allowed to carry user data for fast setup. The startup sequence is described in Section 5 of this document. SCTP provides for graceful close (i.e., shutdown) of an active association on request from the SCTP user. See the description of the SHUTDOWN primitive in Section 10. SCTP also allows ungraceful close (i.e., abort), either on request from the user (ABORT
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 12
   primitive) or as a result of an error condition detected within the
   SCTP layer.  Section 9 describes both the graceful and the ungraceful
   close procedures.

   SCTP does not support a half-open state (like TCP) wherein one side
   may continue sending data while the other end is closed.  When either
   endpoint performs a shutdown, the association on each peer will stop
   accepting new data from its user and only deliver data in queue at
   the time of the graceful close (see Section 9).

1.5.2. Sequenced Delivery within Streams

The term "stream" is used in SCTP to refer to a sequence of user messages that are to be delivered to the upper-layer protocol in order with respect to other messages within the same stream. This is in contrast to its usage in TCP, where it refers to a sequence of bytes (in this document, a byte is assumed to be 8 bits). The SCTP user can specify at association startup time the number of streams to be supported by the association. This number is negotiated with the remote end (see Section 5.1.1). User messages are associated with stream numbers (SEND, RECEIVE primitives, Section 10). Internally, SCTP assigns a Stream Sequence Number to each message passed to it by the SCTP user. On the receiving side, SCTP ensures that messages are delivered to the SCTP user in sequence within a given stream. However, while one stream may be blocked waiting for the next in-sequence user message, delivery from other streams may proceed. SCTP provides a mechanism for bypassing the sequenced delivery service. User messages sent using this mechanism are delivered to the SCTP user as soon as they are received.

1.5.3. User Data Fragmentation

When needed, SCTP fragments user messages to ensure that the SCTP packet passed to the lower layer conforms to the path MTU. On receipt, fragments are reassembled into complete messages before being passed to the SCTP user.

1.5.4. Acknowledgement and Congestion Avoidance

SCTP assigns a Transmission Sequence Number (TSN) to each user data fragment or unfragmented message. The TSN is independent of any Stream Sequence Number assigned at the stream level. The receiving end acknowledges all TSNs received, even if there are gaps in the sequence. In this way, reliable delivery is kept functionally separate from sequenced stream delivery.
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 13
   The acknowledgement and congestion avoidance function is responsible
   for packet retransmission when timely acknowledgement has not been
   received.  Packet retransmission is conditioned by congestion
   avoidance procedures similar to those used for TCP.  See Section 6
   and Section 7 for a detailed description of the protocol procedures
   associated with this function.

1.5.5. Chunk Bundling

As described in Section 3, the SCTP packet as delivered to the lower layer consists of a common header followed by one or more chunks. Each chunk may contain either user data or SCTP control information. The SCTP user has the option to request bundling of more than one user message into a single SCTP packet. The chunk bundling function of SCTP is responsible for assembly of the complete SCTP packet and its disassembly at the receiving end. During times of congestion, an SCTP implementation MAY still perform bundling even if the user has requested that SCTP not bundle. The user's disabling of bundling only affects SCTP implementations that may delay a small period of time before transmission (to attempt to encourage bundling). When the user layer disables bundling, this small delay is prohibited but not bundling that is performed during congestion or retransmission.

1.5.6. Packet Validation

A mandatory Verification Tag field and a 32-bit checksum field (see Appendix B for a description of the CRC32c checksum) are included in the SCTP common header. The Verification Tag value is chosen by each end of the association during association startup. Packets received without the expected Verification Tag value are discarded, as a protection against blind masquerade attacks and against stale SCTP packets from a previous association. The CRC32c checksum should be set by the sender of each SCTP packet to provide additional protection against data corruption in the network. The receiver of an SCTP packet with an invalid CRC32c checksum silently discards the packet.

1.5.7. Path Management

The sending SCTP user is able to manipulate the set of transport addresses used as destinations for SCTP packets through the primitives described in Section 10. The SCTP path management function chooses the destination transport address for each outgoing SCTP packet based on the SCTP user's instructions and the currently perceived reachability status of the eligible destination set. The path management function monitors reachability through heartbeats
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 14
   when other packet traffic is inadequate to provide this information
   and advises the SCTP user when reachability of any far-end transport
   address changes.  The path management function is also responsible
   for reporting the eligible set of local transport addresses to the
   far end during association startup, and for reporting the transport
   addresses returned from the far end to the SCTP user.

   At association startup, a primary path is defined for each SCTP
   endpoint, and is used for normal sending of SCTP packets.

   On the receiving end, the path management is responsible for
   verifying the existence of a valid SCTP association to which the
   inbound SCTP packet belongs before passing it for further processing.

   Note: Path Management and Packet Validation are done at the same
   time, so although described separately above, in reality they cannot
   be performed as separate items.

1.6. Serial Number Arithmetic

It is essential to remember that the actual Transmission Sequence Number space is finite, though very large. This space ranges from 0 to 2**32 - 1. Since the space is finite, all arithmetic dealing with Transmission Sequence Numbers must be performed modulo 2**32. This unsigned arithmetic preserves the relationship of sequence numbers as they cycle from 2**32 - 1 to 0 again. There are some subtleties to computer modulo arithmetic, so great care should be taken in programming the comparison of such values. When referring to TSNs, the symbol "=<" means "less than or equal"(modulo 2**32). Comparisons and arithmetic on TSNs in this document SHOULD use Serial Number Arithmetic as defined in [RFC1982] where SERIAL_BITS = 32. An endpoint SHOULD NOT transmit a DATA chunk with a TSN that is more than 2**31 - 1 above the beginning TSN of its current send window. Doing so will cause problems in comparing TSNs. Transmission Sequence Numbers wrap around when they reach 2**32 - 1. That is, the next TSN a DATA chunk MUST use after transmitting TSN = 2*32 - 1 is TSN = 0. Any arithmetic done on Stream Sequence Numbers SHOULD use Serial Number Arithmetic as defined in [RFC1982] where SERIAL_BITS = 16. All other arithmetic and comparisons in this document use normal arithmetic.
Top   ToC   RFC4960 - Page 15

1.7. Changes from RFC 2960

SCTP was originally defined in [RFC2960], which this document obsoletes. Readers interested in the details of the various changes that this document incorporates are asked to consult [RFC4460].

2. Conventions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].


(page 15 continued on part 2)

Next Section