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Last updated
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2008 January 3
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In a nutshell
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Our purpose is to provide a quick, hand-edited, directory
to all things related to Signal Transport technology.
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What's new?
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Web hosting change - yet again. Web hosting must be a
tricky business because the web hosts used by
sigtran.org always go out of business. We are marking the event
with a fresh retro Web 1.0 facelift.
ss7box is using lksctp
for internal communication sockets in preparation for
clustered configurations.
SCTP moves to standards track in September 2007 with
RFC 4960.
A new draft proposal on
Sockets API Extensions for Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
is available. It is authored
by the usual suspects.
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What is SCTP?
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Here's a
tutorial
(not for dummies or idiot's) that integrates the
author's comments with material taken from RFC2960.
The links within the document make for a better
navigation experience than reading the RFC in text
format.
Here's a list of more tutorials:
Once you've completed the tutorials you'll be ready to read the source
document,
RFC 4960.
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Standards bodies
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- IETF-TSVWG
- The group with a wider interest in
transport protocols - most notably, the TCP/UDP/IP
protocols. They now watch over the SCTP protocol as
one would naturally expect.
- IETF-SIGTRAN
- The initial focus group whose charter is now complete.
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Open source
SCTP
implementations
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- An kernel implementation of SCTP. Also has some of the
adaptation layers.
- Linux Kernel Implementation
- An implementation of SCTP that is being woven directly into
the Linux kernel at the same level as TCP and UDP. Actively maintained.
- sctplib
- A site full of information and links to the
RFCs describing SIGTRAN protocols. It is
sponsered by Siemans and the University of
Essen, a group that produces a
user space implementation of SCTP. Actively maintained.
- OpenSS7
- The SCTP part of the project is open source. It
is based on a forked version of Linux STREAMS.
- Reference Implementation
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No longer available at this website. However, the work has been integrated
into the KAME project described below, which itself has been integrated
into FreeBSD and NetBSD.
The author of the Reference Implementation, Randall Stewart, and
Qiaobing Xie, have
written a book fittingly entitled "SCTP".
- KAME
- SCTP on BSD development effort by a consortium of companies in Japan. Project
ended 2006.3. Work integrated into FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD.
- ns-2 SCTP module by UoD P.E.L.
- SCTP testing/simulation by the Protocol Engineering Laboratory at the
University of Delaware.
- RivuS
- SCTP on BSD development effort by some folks at the Pune
Institute of Computer Technology.
- Sun SCTP
- An implementation in the Solaris kernel.
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Open source
adaptation
layer
implementations
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- M3UA on Sourceforge
- Uses UDP as the transport layer out of the box. Conversion to
SCTP is straightforward according to documentation. Compiles cleanly
out of the box. Nice documentation. Well worth a look. Go to the
last page of the .pdf to see a graphic of the architecture. A management
layer figures in prominently. The download statistics show that there is
recent interest in this package.
- SCCP User Adaptation (SUA)
- This implementation is used in conjunction
with the
sctplib
open source SCTP implementation.
- OpenSS7
- Offers a suite of user adaptation (UA) layer
protocols that are compatible with the SCTP
implementantion. Probably embedded in the SCTP tarball
but this is not known authoritatively.
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Tools
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- sctpperf
- A client/server benchmark tool that can be used to measure the performance of SCTP connections
- SCTP Test Tool (stt)
- Built by the sctplib folks.
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Other sources
of information
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The open source SUA implementation author's
homepage
is worth a visit. Be sure to visit the history links.
Since SCTP is interesting to those also interested
in telephony signaling, it seems appropriate to have
a reference on C7/SS7.
This site
is a collection of links from names commonly
associated with C7/SS7. And when you've finished with the abridged
editions, you can read the
ITU specs - for free.
I wonder why the ANSI specs are not free yet?
SIGTRAN and SIP
protocols are related to the emerging technology of Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) that may replace today's switched
telephone networks. The SIGTRAN protocol is an
important tool for bridging the existing SS7
signaling network to the VoIP networks.
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Conformance
Performance
Research
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A published SCTP Performance Test for lksctp is made possible by the
DataTAG project.
The bakeoff is now known as the plugtest. Groups attend, results are owned by and
published by the participants.
If you're interested in a bakeoff you should
look here. So many delicious things to do with
transfatty acids.
A collection of SCTP related studies and reports:
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Applications
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Products &
Services
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Gateways and End Nodes
Stacks, Blades, and Cards
Testers
Please tell us about a company that should be added to this list
by sending an email to ss7box(at)gmail.com.
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