The SBC Core supports Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) as a transport protocol for SIP. SCTP is an IETF transport-layer protocol which provides several enhancements over the Transport Control Protocol (TCP), including:
- Message Orientation - SCTP transports individual messages, rather than a continuous byte stream. This allows SCTP to separate different signaling messages at the transport layer.
- Ordered and Unordered Delivery - Assembling received bytes to form signaling messages is performed at the application layer; therefore TCP always delivers an ordered stream of bytes to the application. SCTP can deliver signaling messages to the application as soon as they arrive (when using the unordered service). The loss of a signaling message does not affect the delivery of the rest of the messages. This avoids the head of line blocking problem in TCP, which occurs when multiple higher layer connections are multiplexed within a single TCP connection.
- Multiple Streams - Missing messages in one stream do not delay the delivery of messages in other streams. A SIP transaction can be considered an application layer connection: there are multiple transactions running between proxies. The loss of a message in one transaction should not adversely affect the ability of a different transaction to send a message. Thus, if SIP is run between entities with many transactions occurring in parallel, SCTP can provide improved performance over SIP over TCP.
If the SCTP profile is not configured, then it will take the default SCTP profile. If the SCTP profile needs to be modified when associated with SIP signaling port, the port should be disabled for modification to take effect.
Multi-homing and IPv6 feature for SCTP are not supported in this release.
To View the SCTP Profile
On the SBC main screen, go to Configuration > Profile Management > Category: Signaling Profiles > SCTP Profile.
The SCTP Profile window opens.
To Edit the SCTP Profile
To edit any of the SCTP Profile in the list, click the radio button next to the specific SCTP Profile name.
The Edit Selected SCTP Profile window is displayed below.
Make the required changes and click Save at the right hand bottom of the panel to save the changes made.
To Create the SCTP Profile
To create a new SCTP Profile, click New SCTP Profile tab on the SCTP Profile List panel.
The Create New SCTP Profile window is displayed.
The following fields are displayed:
To Copy SCTP Profile
To copy any of the created SCTP Profile and to make any minor changes, click the radio button next to the specific SCTP Profile to highlight the row.
Click Copy SCTP Profile tab on the SCTP Profile List panel.
The Copy Selected SCTP Profile window is displayed along with the field details which can be edited.
Make the required changes to the required fields and click Save to save the changes. The copied SCTP Profile is displayed at the bottom of the original SCTP Profile in the SCTP Profile List panel.
To Delete SCTP Profile
To delete any of the created SCTP Profile, click the radio button next to the specific SCTP Profile which you want to delete.
Click Delete at the end of the highlighted row. A delete confirmation message appears seeking your decision.
Click OK to remove the specific SCTP Profile from the list.