After the common header a variable number of chunks are sent, up to the maximum possible in the MTU. All chunks can be bundled except for INIT, INIT ACK and SHUTDOWN COMPLETE, which must not be bundled. DATA chunks may be broken down to fit inside the MTU of the packets.
SCTP Common and generic headers
Every SCTP packet contains the Common header as seen above. The header contains four different fields and is set for every SCTP packet.
Source port - bit 0-15. This field gives the source port of the packet, which port it was sent from. The same as for TCP and UDP source port.
Destination port - bit 16-31. This is the destination port of the packet, ie., the port that the packet is going to. It is the same as for the TCP and UDP destination port.
Verification Tag - bit 32-63. The verification tag is used to verify that the packet comes from the correct sender. It is always set to the same value as the value received by the other peer in the Initiate Tag during the association initialization, with a few exceptions:
• An SCTP packet containing an INIT chunk must have the Verification tag set to 0.
• A SHUTDOWN COMPLETE chunk with the T-bit set must have the verification tag copied from the verification tag of the SHUTDOWN-ACK chunk.
• Packets containing ABORT chunk may have the verification tag set to the same verification tag as the packet causing the ABORT.
Checksum - bit 64-95. A checksum calculated for the whole SCTP packet based on the Adler-32 algorithm. Read RFC 2960 - Stream Control Transmission Protocol, appendix B for more information about this algorithm.
All SCTP chunks has a special layout that they all adhere to as can be seen above. This isn't an actual header, but rather a formalized way of how they do look.
Type - bit 0-7. This field specifies the chunk type of the packet, for example is it an INIT or SHUTDOWN chunk or what? Each chunk type has a specific number, and is specified in the image below. Here is a complete list of Chunk types:
Table 2-1. SCTP Types
Chunk Number Chunk Name 0 Payload Data (DATA) 1 Initiation (INIT) 2 Initiation Acknowledgement (INIT ACK) 3 Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) 4 Heartbeat Request (HEARTBEAT) 5 Heartbeat Acknowledgement (HEARTBEAT ACK) 6 Abort (ABORT) 7 Shutdown (SHUTDOWN) 8 Shutdown Acknowledgement (SHUTDOWN ACK) 9 Operation Error (ERROR) 10 State Cookie (COOKIE ECHO) 11 Cookie Acknowledgement (COOKIE ACK) 12 Reserved for Explicit Congestion Notification Echo (ECNE) 13 Reserved for Congestion Window Reduced (CWR) 14 Shutdown Complete (SHUTDOWN COMPLETE) 15-62 Reserved for IETF 63 IETF-defined chunk extensions 64-126 reserved to IETF 127 IETF-defined chunk extensions 128-190 reserved to IETF 191 IETF-defined chunk extensions 192-254 reserved to IETF 255 IETF-defined chunk extensionsChunk Flags - bit 8-15. The chunk flags are generally not used but are set up for future usage if nothing else. They are chunk specific flags or bits of information that might be needed for the other peer. According to specifications, flags are only used in DATA, ABORT and SHUTDOWN COMPLETE packets at this moment. This may change however.
Important! A lot of times when you read an RFC, you might run into some old proven problems. The RFC 2960 - Stream Control Transmission Protocol document is one example of this, where they specifically specify that the Chunk flags should always be set to 0 and ignored unless used for something. This is written all over the place, and it begs for problems in the future. If you do firewalling or routing, watch out very carefully for this, since specifications for fields like this may change in the future and hence break at your firewall without any legit reason. This happened before with the implementation of ECN in the IP headers for example. See more in the IP headers section of this chapter.
Chunk Length - bit 16-31. This is the chunk length calculated in bytes. It includes all headers, including the chunk type, chunk flags, chunk length and chunk value. If there is no chunk value, the chunk length will be set to 4 (bytes).
Chunk Value - bit 32-n. This is specific to each chunk and may contain more flags and data pertaining to the chunk type. Sometimes it might be empty, in which case the chunk length will be set to 4.
SCTP ABORT chunk
The ABORT chunk is used to abort an association as previously described in the Shutdown and abort section of this chapter. ABORT is issued upon unrecoverable errors in the association such as bad headers or data.
Type - bit 0-7. Always set to 6 for this chunk type.
Reserved - bit 8-14. Reserved for future chunk flags but not used as of writing this. See the SCTP Common and generic headers for more information about the chunk flags field.
T-bit - bit 15. If this bit is set to 0, the sender had a TCB associated with this packet that it has destroyed. If the sender had no TCB the T-bit should be set to 1.
Length - bit 16-31. Sets the length of the chunk in bytes including error causes.
SCTP COOKIE ACK chunk
The COOKIE ACK chunk is used during the initialization of the connection and never anywhere else in the connection. It must precede all DATA and SACK chunks but may be sent in the same packet as the first of these packets.
Type - bit 0-7. Always set to 11 for this type.
Chunk flags - bit 8-15. Not used so far. Should always be set to 0 according to RFC 2960 - Stream Control Transmission Protocol. You should always watch out for this kind of specific behaviour stated by RFC's since it might change in the future, and hence break your firewalls etc. Just the same as happened with IP and ECN. See the SCTP Common and generic headers section for more information.
Length - bit 16-31. Should always be 4 (bytes) for this chunk.
SCTP COOKIE ECHO chunk
The COOKIE ECHO chunk is used during the initialization of the SCTP connection by the initiating party to reply to the cookie sent by the responding party in the State cookie field in the INIT ACK packet. It may be sent together with DATA chunks in the same packet, but must precede the DATA chunks in such case.
Type - bit 0-7. The chunk type is always set to 10 for this chunk.
Chunk flags - bit 8-15. This field is not used today. The RFC specifies that the flags should always be set to 0, but this might cause trouble as can be seen in the SCTP Common and generic headers section above, specifically the Chunk flags explanation.
Length - bit 16-31. Specifies the length of the chunk, including type, chunk flags, length and cookie fields in bytes.
Cookie - bit 32-n. This field contains the cookie as sent in the previous INIT ACK chunk. It must be the exact same as the cookie sent by the responding party for the other end to actually open the connection. The RFC 2960 - Stream Control Transmission Protocol specifies that the cookie should be as small as possible to insure interoperability, which is very vague and doesn't say much.
SCTP DATA chunk
DATA chunks are used to send actual data through the stream and have rather complex headers in some ways, but not really worse than TCP headers in general. Each DATA chunk may be part of a different stream, since each SCTP connection can handle several different streams.
Type - bit 0-7. The Type field should always be set to 0 for DATA chunks.
Reserved - bit 8-12. Not used today. Might be applicable for change. See SCTP Common and generic headers for more information.
U-bit - bit 13. The U-bit is used to indicate if this is an unordered DATA chunk. If it is, the Stream Sequence Number must be ignored by the receiving host and send it on to the upper layer without delay or tries to re-order the DATA chunks.
B-bit - bit 14. The B-bit is used to indicate the beginning of a fragmented DATA chunk. If this bit is set and the E (ending) bit is not set, it indicates that this is the first fragment of a chunk that has been fragmented into several DATA chunks.
E-bit - bit 15. The E-bit is used to indicate the ending of a fragmented DATA chunk. If this flag is set on a chunk, it signals to the SCTP receiver that it can start reassembling the fragments and pass them on to the upper layer. If a packet has both the BE-bits set to set to 0, it signals that the chunk is a middle part of a fragmented chunk. If both BE-bits are set to 1 it signals that the packet is unfragmented and requires no reassembly et cetera.
Length - bit 16-31. The length of the whole DATA chunk calculated in bytes,including the chunk type field and on until the end of the chunk.
TSN - bit 32-63. The Transmission Sequence Number (TSN) is sent in the DATA chunk, and the receiving host uses the TSN to acknowledge that the chunk got through properly by replying with a SACK chunk. This is an overall value for the whole SCTP association.
Stream Identifier - bit 64-79. The Stream Identifier is sent along with the DATA chunk to identify which stream the DATA chunk is associated with. This is used since SCTP can transport several streams within a single association.
Stream Sequence Number - bit 80-95. This is the sequence number of the chunk for the specific stream identified by the Stream Identifier. This sequence number is specific for each stream identifier. If a chunk has been fragmented, the Stream Sequence Number must be the same for all fragments of the original chunk.
Payload Protocol Identifier - bit 96-127. This value is filled in by the upper layers, or applications using the SCTP protocol as a way to identify to each other the content of the DATA chunk. The field must always be sent, including in fragments since routers and firewalls, et cetera, on the way might need the information. If the value was set to 0, the value was not set by the upper layers.
User data - bit 128-n. This is the actual data that the chunk is transporting. It can be of variable length, ending on an even octet. It is the data in the stream as specified by the stream sequence number n in the stream S.
SCTP ERROR chunk
The ERROR chunk is sent to inform the other peer of any problems within the current stream. Each ERROR chunk can contain one or more Error Causes, which are more specifically detailed in the RFC 2960 - Stream Control Transmission Protocol document. I will not go into further details here than the basic ERROR chunk, since it would be too much information. The ERROR chunk is not fatal in and of itself, but rather details an error that has happened. It may however be used together with an ABORT chunk to inform the peer of the error before killing the connection.
Type - bit 0-7. This value is always set to 9 for ERROR chunks.
Chunk flags - bit 8-15. Not used today. Might be applicable for change. See SCTP Common and generic headers for more information.
Length - bit 16-31. Specifies the length of the chunk in bytes, including all the Error Causes.
Error causes - bit 32-n. Each ERROR chunk may contain one or more Error Causes, which notifies the opposite peer of a problem with the connection. Each Error Cause follows a specific format, as described in the RFC 2960 - Stream Control Transmission Protocol document. We will not go into them here more than to say that they all contain an Cause Code, cause length and cause specific information field. The following Error Causes are possible:
Table 2-2. Error Causes
Cause Value Chunk Code 1 Invalid Stream Identifier 2 Missing Mandatory Parameter 3 Stale Cookie Error 4 Out of Resource 5 Unresolvable Address 6 Unrecognized Chunk Type 7 Invalid Mandatory Parameter 8 Unrecognized Parameters 9 No User Data 10 Cookie Received While Shutting DownSCTP HEARTBEAT chunk
The HEARTBEAT chunk is sent by one of the peers to probe and find out if a specific SCTP endpoint address is up. This is sent to the different addresses that was negotiated during the initialization of the association to find out if they are all up.
Type - bit 0-7. The type is always set to 4 for HEARTBEAT chunks.
Chunk flags - bit 8-15. Not used today. Might be applicable for change. See SCTP Common and generic headers for more information.