Columbia University Cisco Systems Ericsson This document specifies a mechanism for usage of SCTP (the Stream Control Transmission Protocol) as the transport mechanism between SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) entities. SCTP is a new protocol that provides several features that may prove beneficial for transport between SIP entities that exchange a large amount of messages, including gateways and proxies. As SIP is transport-independent, support of SCTP is a relatively straightforward process, nearly identical to support for TCP. [STANDARDS-TRACK]