sctpsocket = socket(PFINET, SOCKSTREAM, IPPROTOSCTP);
sctpsocket = socket(PFINET, SOCKSEQPACKET, IPPROTOSCTP);
DESCRIPTION
This is an implementation of the SCTP protocol as defined in RFC2960
and RFC3309. It is a message oriented, reliable transport protocol with
direct support for multihoming that runs on top of ip(7), and supports
both v4 and v6 versions.
Like TCP, SCTP provides reliable, connection oriented data delivery
with congestion control. Unlike TCP, SCTP also provides message bound‐
ary preservation, ordered and unordered message delivery, multi-stream‐
ing and multi-homing. Detection of data corruption, loss of data and
duplication of data is achieved by using checksums and sequence num‐
bers. A selective retransmission mechanism is applied to correct loss
or corruption of data.
This implementation supports a mapping of SCTP into sockets API as
defined in the draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctpsocket-10.txt(Sockets API exten‐
sions for SCTP). Two styles of interfaces are supported.
A one-to-many style interface with 1 to MANY relationship between
socket and associations where the outbound association setup is
implicit. The syntax of a one-to-many style socket() call is
sd = socket(PFINET, SOCKSEQPACKET, IPPROTOSCTP);
A typical server in this style uses the following socket calls in
sequence to prepare an endpoint for servicing requests.
1. socket()
2. bind()
3. listen()
4. recvmsg()
5. sendmsg()
6. close()
A typical client uses the following calls in sequence to setup an asso‐
ciation with a server to request services.
1. socket()
2. sendmsg()
3. recvmsg()
4. close()
A one-to-one style interface with a 1 to 1 relationship between socket
and association which enables existing TCP applications to be ported to
SCTP with very little effort. The syntax of a one-to-one style socket()
call is
sd = socket(PFINET, SOCKSTREAM, IPPROTOSCTP);
A typical server in one-to-one style uses the following system call
sequence to prepare an SCTP endpoint for servicing requests:
1. socket()
2. bind()
3. listen()
4. accept()
The accept() call blocks until a new association is set up. It returns
with a new socket descriptor. The server then uses the new socket
descriptor to communicate with the client, using recv() and send()
calls to get requests and send back responses. Then it calls
5. close()
to terminate the association. A typical client uses the following sys‐
tem call sequence to setup an association with a server to request ser‐
vices:
1. socket()
2. connect()
After returning from connect(), the client uses send() and recv() calls
to send out requests and receive responses from the server. The client
calls
3. close()
to terminate this association when done.
ADDRESS FORMATS
SCTP is built on top of IP (see ip(7)). The address formats defined by
ip(7) apply to SCTP. SCTP only supports point-to-point communication;
broadcasting and multicasting are not supported.
SYSCTLS
These variables can be accessed by the /proc/sys/net/sctp/* files or
with the sysctl(2) interface. In addition, most IP sysctls also apply
to SCTP. See ip(7).
Please check kernel documentation for this, at Documentation/network‐
ing/ip-sysctl.txt.
STATISTICS
These variables can be accessed by the /proc/net/sctp/* files.
assocs Displays the following information about the active associa‐
tions. assoc ptr, sock ptr, socket style, sock state, associa‐
tion state, hash bucket, association id, bytes in transmit
queue, bytes in receive queue, user id, inode, local port,
remote port, local addresses and remote addresses.
eps Displays the following information about the active endpoints.
endpoint ptr, sock ptr, socket style, sock state, hash bucket,
local port, user id, inode and local addresses.
snmp Displays the following statistics related to SCTP states, pack‐
ets and chunks.
SctpCurrEstab
The number of associations for which the current state is
either ESTABLISHED, SHUTDOWN-RECEIVED or SHUTDOWN-PEND‐
ING.
SctpActiveEstabs
The number of times that associations have made a direct
transition to the ESTABLISHED state from the COOKIE-
ECHOED state. The upper layer initiated the association
attempt.
SctpPassiveEstabs
The number of times that associations have made a direct
transition to the ESTABLISHED state from the CLOSED
state. The remote endpoint initiated the association
attempt.
SctpAborteds
The number of times that associations have made a direct
transition to the CLOSED state from any state using the
primitive 'ABORT'. Ungraceful termination of the associa‐
tion.
SctpShutdowns
The number of times that associations have made a direct
transition to the CLOSED state from either the SHUTDOWN-
SENT state or the SHUTDOWN-ACK-SENT state. Graceful ter‐
mination of the association.
SctpOutOfBlues
The number of out of the blue packets received by the
host. An out of the blue packet is an SCTP packet cor‐
rectly formed, including the proper checksum, but for
which the receiver was unable to identify an appropriate
association.
SctpChecksumErrors
The number of SCTP packets received with an invalid
checksum.
SctpOutCtrlChunks
The number of SCTP control chunks sent (retransmissions
are not included). Control chunks are those chunks dif‐
ferent from DATA.
SctpOutOrderChunks
The number of SCTP ordered data chunks sent (retransmis‐
sions are not included).
SctpOutUnorderChunks
The number of SCTP unordered chunks(data chunks in which
the U bit is set to 1) sent (retransmissions are not
included).
SctpInCtrlChunks
The number of SCTP control chunks received (no duplicate
chunks included).
SctpInOrderChunks
The number of SCTP ordered data chunks received (no
duplicate chunks included).
SctpInUnorderChunks
The number of SCTP unordered chunks(data chunks in which
the U bit is set to 1) received (no duplicate chunks
included).
SctpFragUsrMsgs
The number of user messages that have to be fragmented
because of the MTU.
SctpReasmUsrMsgs
The number of user messages reassembled, after conversion
into DATA chunks.
SctpOutSCTPPacks
The number of SCTP packets sent. Retransmitted DATA
chunks are included.
SctpInSCTPPacks
The number of SCTP packets received. Duplicates are
included.
SOCKET OPTIONS
To set or get a SCTP socket option, call getsockopt(2) to read
or setsockopt(2) to write the option with the option level argu‐
ment set to SOLSCTP.
SCTPRTOINFO.
This option is used to get or set the protocol parameters
used to initialize and bound retransmission timout(RTO).
The structure sctprtoinfo defined in
/usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to access and modify
these parameters.
SCTPASSOCINFO
This option is used to both examine and set various asso‐
ciation and endpoint parameters. The sturcture
sctpassocparams defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h
is used to access and modify these parameters.
SCTPINITMSG
This option is used to get or set the protocol parameters
for the default association initialization. The structure
sctpinitmsg defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is
used to access and modify these parameters.
Setting initialization parameters is effective only on an
unconnected socket (for one-to-many style sockets only
future associations are effected by the change). With
one-to-one style sockets, this option is inherited by
sockets derived from a listener socket.
SCTPNODELAY
Turn on/off any Nagle-like algorithm. This means that
packets are generally sent as soon as possible and no
unnecessary delays are introduced, at the cost of more
packets in the network. Expects an integer boolean flag.
SCTPAUTOCLOSE
This socket option is applicable to the one-to-many style
socket only. When set it will cause associations that are
idle for more than the specified number of seconds to
automatically close. An association being idle is defined
an association that has NOT sent or received user data.
The special value of 0 indicates that no automatic close
of any associations should be performed. The option
expects an integer defining the number of seconds of idle
time before an association is closed.
SCTPSETPEERPRIMARYADDR
Requests that the peer mark the enclosed address as the
association primary. The enclosed address must be one of
the association's locally bound addresses. The structure
sctpsetpeerprim defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h
is used to make a set peer primary request.
SCTPPRIMARYADDR
Requests that the local SCTP stack use the enclosed peer
address as the association primary. The enclosed address
must be one of the association peer's addresses. The
structure sctpprim defined in
/usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to make a get/set
primary request.
SCTPDISABLEFRAGMENTS
This option is a on/off flag and is passed an integer
where a non-zero is on and a zero is off. If enabled no
SCTP message fragmentation will be performed. Instead if
a message being sent exceeds the current PMTU size, the
message will NOT be sent and an error will be indicated
to the user.
SCTPPEERADDRPARAMS
Using this option, applications can enable or disable
heartbeats for any peer address of an association, modify
an address's heartbeat interval, force a heartbeat to be
sent immediately, and adjust the address's maximum number
of retransmissions sent before an address is considered
unreachable. The structure sctppaddrparams defined in
/usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to access and modify
an address's parameters.
SCTPDEFAULTSENDPARAM
Applications that wish to use the sendto() system call
may wish to specify a default set of parameters that
would normally be supplied through the inclusion of
ancillary data. This socket option allows such an appli‐
cation to set the default sctpsndrcvinfo structure. The
application that wishes to use this socket option simply
passes in to this call the sctpsndrcvinfo structure
defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h. The input parame‐
ters accepted by this call include sinfostream,
sinfoflags, sinfoppid, sinfocontext, sinfotimetolive.
The user must set the sinfoassocid field to identify
the
association to affect if the caller is using the one-to-
many style.
SCTPEVENTS
This socket option is used to specify various notifica‐
tions and ancillary data the user wishes to receive. The
structure sctpeventsubscribe defined in
/usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to access or modify
the events of interest to the user.
SCTPIWANTMAPPEDV4ADDR
This socket option is a boolean flag which turns on or
off mapped V4 addresses. If this option is turned on and
the socket is type PFINET6, then IPv4 addresses will be
mapped to V6 representation. If this option is turned
off, then no mapping will be done of V4 addresses and a
user will receive both PFINET6 and PFINET type
addresses on the socket.
By default this option is turned on and expects an inte‐
ger to be passed where non-zero turns on the option and
zero turns off the option.
SCTPMAXSEG
This socket option specifies the maximum size to put in
any outgoing SCTP DATA chunk. If a message is larger than
this size it will be fragmented by SCTP into the speci‐
fied size. Note that the underlying SCTP implementation
may fragment into smaller sized chunks when the PMTU of
the underlying association is smaller than the value set
by the user. The option expects an integer.
The default value for this option is 0 which indicates
the user is NOT limiting fragmentation and only the PMTU
will effect SCTP's choice of DATA chunk size.
SCTPSTATUS
Applications can retrieve current status information
about an association, including association state, peer
receiver window size, number of unacked data chunks, and
number of data chunks pending receipt. This information
is read-only. The structure sctpstatus defined in
/usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to access this infor‐
mation.
SCTPGETPEERADDRINFO
Applications can retrieve information about a specific
peer address of an association, including its reachabil‐
ity state, congestion window, and retransmission timer
values. This information is read-only. The structure
sctppaddrinfo defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is
used to access this information.
SCTPGETASSOCSTATS
Applications can retrieve current statistics about an
association, including SACKs sent and received, SCTP
packets sent and received. The complete list can be found
in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h in struct
sctpassocstats.
AUTHORS
Sridhar Samudrala
SEE ALSO
socket(7), socket(2), ip(7), bind(2), listen(2), accept(2), con‐
nect(2), sendmsg(2), recvmsg(2), sysctl(2), getsockopt(2),
sctpbindx(3), sctpconnectx(3), sctpsendmsg(3), sctpsend(3),
sctprecvmsg(3), sctppeeloff(3), sctpgetladdrs(3), sctpget‐
paddrs(3), sctpoptinfo(3).
RFC2960, RFC3309 for the SCTP specification.
Linux Man Page 2005-10-25 SCTP(7)