Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) for Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
RFC 6083
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) M. Tuexen
Request for Comments: 6083 R. Seggelmann
Category: Standards Track Muenster Univ. of Applied Sciences
ISSN: 2070-1721 E. Rescorla
RTFM, Inc.
January 2011
Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS)
for Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
Abstract
This document describes the usage of the Datagram Transport Layer
Security (DTLS) protocol over the Stream Control Transmission
Protocol (SCTP).
DTLS over SCTP provides communications privacy for applications that
use SCTP as their transport protocol and allows client/server
applications to communicate in a way that is designed to prevent
eavesdropping and detect tampering or message forgery.
Applications using DTLS over SCTP can use almost all transport
features provided by SCTP and its extensions.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6083.
Tuexen, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 6083 DTLS for SCTP January 2011
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. DTLS Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. SCTP Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction
1.1. Overview
This document describes the usage of the Datagram Transport Layer
Security (DTLS) protocol, as defined in [RFC4347], over the Stream
Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), as defined in [RFC4960].
DTLS over SCTP provides communications privacy for applications that
use SCTP as their transport protocol and allows client/server
applications to communicate in a way that is designed to prevent
eavesdropping and detect tampering or message forgery.
Applications using DTLS over SCTP can use almost all transport
features provided by SCTP and its extensions.
TLS, from which DTLS was derived, is designed to run on top of a
byte-stream-oriented transport protocol providing a reliable, in-
sequence delivery. Thus, TLS is currently mainly being used on top
of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), as defined in [RFC0793].
Tuexen, et al. Standards Track [Page 2]
RFC 6083 DTLS for SCTP January 2011
TLS over SCTP as described in [RFC3436] has some serious limitations:
o It does not support the unordered delivery of SCTP user messages.
o It does not support partial reliability as defined in [RFC3758].
o It only supports the usage of the same number of streams in both
directions.
o It uses a TLS connection for every bidirectional stream, which
requires a substantial amount of resources and message exchanges
if a large number of streams is used.
DTLS over SCTP as described in this document overcomes these
limitations of TLS over SCTP. In particular, DTLS/SCTP supports:
o preservation of message boundaries.
o a large number of unidirectional and bidirectional streams.
o ordered and unordered delivery of SCTP user messages.
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