Ubuntu Manpage: sctp - SCTP protocol.

Provided by: libsctp-dev_1.0.16+dfsg-3_amd64

NAME

       sctp - SCTP protocol.

SYNOPSIS

       #include <sys/socket.h>
       #include <netinet/in.h>
       #include <netinet/sctp.h>

       sctp_socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_SCTP);
       sctp_socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_SEQPACKET, IPPROTO_SCTP);

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  boundary  preservation,  ordered  and
       unordered   message   delivery,   multi-streaming  and  multi-homing.  Detection  of  data
       corruption, loss of data and duplication of  data  is  achieved  by  using  checksums  and
       sequence  numbers.  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  extensions 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(PF_INET, SOCK_SEQPACKET, IPPROTO_SCTP);

       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 association 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(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_SCTP);

       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 system call sequence to
       setup an association with a server to request services:

            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).

addip_enable
Enable SCTP ADDIP(Dynamic Address Reconfiguration) Support. This is off by default.

association_max_retrans
Maximum number of consecutive retransmissions to a peer before an endpoint
considers that the peer is unreachable and closes the association. The default
value is 10.

cookie_preserve_enable
Handle COOKIE PRESERVATIVE parameter in the INIT chunk. This is on by default.

hb_interval
This is the interval when a HEARTBEAT chunk is sent to a destination transport
address to monitor the reachability of an idle destination transport address. The
default is 30 seconds and is maintained in msecs.

max_burst
Maximum number of new data packets that can be sent in a burst. The default value
is 4.

max_init_retransmits
Maximum number of times an INIT chunk or a COOKIE ECHO chunk is retransmitted
before an endpoint aborts the initialization process and closes the association.
The default value is 8.

path_max_retrans
Maximum number of consecutive retransmissions over a destination transport address
of a peer endpoint before it is marked as inactive. The default value is 5.

prsctp_enable
Enable PR-SCTP. This is on by default.

rcvbuf_policy
This controls the socket receive buffer accounting policy. The default value is 0
and indicates that all the associations belonging to a socket share the same
receive buffer space. When set to 1, each association will have its own receive
buffer space.

rto_alpha_exp_divisor
This is the RTO.Alpha value when expressed in right shifts and is used in RTO
calculations. The default value is 3.

rto_beta_exp_divisor
This is the RTO.Beta value when expressed in right shifts and is used in RTO
calculations. The default value is 2.

rto_initial
This is the initial value of RTO(retransmission timeout) that is used in RTO
calculations. The default value is 3 seconds and is maintained in msecs.

rto_max
This is the maximum value of RTO(retransmission timeout) that is used in RTO
calculations. The default value is 60 seconds and is maintained in msecs.

rto_min
This is the minimum value of RTO(retransmission timeout) that is used in RTO
calculations. The default value is 1 second and is maintained in msecs.

sack_timeout
Delayed SACK timeout. The default value is 200msecs.

sndbuf_policy
This controls the socket sendbuffer accounting policy. The default value is 0 and
indicates that all the associations belonging to a socket share the same send
buffer space. When set to 1, each association will have its own send buffer space.

valid_cookie_life
This is the maximum lifespan of the Cookie sent in an INIT ACK chunk. The default
value is 60 secs and is maintained in msecs.

STATISTICS

These variables can be accessed by the /proc/net/sctp/* files.

assocs Displays the following information about the active associations. assoc ptr, sock
ptr, socket style, sock state, association 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, packets and chunks.

SctpCurrEstab
The number of associations for which the current state is either ESTABLISHED,
SHUTDOWN-RECEIVED or SHUTDOWN-PENDING.

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
association.

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
termination 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 correctly 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 different from DATA.

SctpOutOrderChunks
The number of SCTP ordered data chunks sent (retransmissions 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 argument set to SOL_SCTP.

SCTP_RTOINFO.
This option is used to get or set the protocol parameters used to initialize and
bound retransmission timout(RTO). The structure sctp_rtoinfo defined in
/usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to access and modify these parameters.

SCTP_ASSOCINFO
This option is used to both examine and set various association and endpoint
parameters. The sturcture sctp_assocparams defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h
is used to access and modify these parameters.

SCTP_INITMSG
This option is used to get or set the protocol parameters for the default
association initialization. The structure sctp_initmsg 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.

SCTP_NODELAY
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.

SCTP_AUTOCLOSE
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.

SCTP_SET_PEER_PRIMARY_ADDR
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 sctp_setpeerprim defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to make a
set peer primary request.

SCTP_PRIMARY_ADDR
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 sctp_prim defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to make a
get/set primary request.

SCTP_DISABLE_FRAGMENTS
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.

SCTP_PEER_ADDR_PARAMS
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
sctp_paddrparams defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to access and
modify an address's parameters.

SCTP_DEFAULT_SEND_PARAM
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 application to set the default
sctp_sndrcvinfo structure. The application that wishes to use this socket option
simply passes in to this call the sctp_sndrcvinfo structure defined in
/usr/include/netinet/sctp.h. The input parameters accepted by this call include
sinfo_stream, sinfo_flags, sinfo_ppid, sinfo_context, sinfo_timetolive. The user
must set the sinfo_assoc_id field to identify the
association to affect if the caller is using the one-to-many style.

SCTP_EVENTS
This socket option is used to specify various notifications and ancillary data the
user wishes to receive. The structure sctp_event_subscribe defined in
/usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to access or modify the events of interest to
the user.

SCTP_I_WANT_MAPPED_V4_ADDR
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 PF_INET6, 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 PF_INET6 and PF_INET type
addresses on the socket.

By default this option is turned on and expects an integer to be passed where non-
zero turns on the option and zero turns off the option.

SCTP_MAXSEG
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
specified 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.

SCTP_STATUS
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 sctp_status defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to access
this information.

SCTP_GET_PEER_ADDR_INFO
Applications can retrieve information about a specific peer address of an
association, including its reachability state, congestion window, and
retransmission timer values. This information is read-only. The structure
sctp_paddr_info defined in /usr/include/netinet/sctp.h is used to access this
information.

SCTP_GET_ASSOC_STATS
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 sctp_assoc_stats.

AUTHORS

       Sridhar Samudrala <sri@us.ibm.com>