RivuS

Analysis phase

• What is the Problem ?

                            As the proposed in RFC 2960 for Stream Control Transmission Protocol ( SCTP ) says that SCTP has two core features MultiStreaming and MultiHoming, the problem is to build the efficient transport layer protocol for the current Internet world.

                            Also the SCTP has other main features like Resistant to DOS attacks because of 4-way handshaking that takes place during the SCTP's peer association setup. Then SCTP provides the reliable data transfer without Head of Line Blocking using MultiStreaming feature of protocol. SCTP offers message oriented data service.

• How we are implementing ?

                            We are implementing this transport layer protocol stack on the 4.3 FreeBSD. Along with this implementation, the other main aim of RivuS is to provide extensions to the current SCTP protocol. We are researching on the extension to the SCTP as Load Sharing for higher performance.

                            We are implementing connection-oriented service transport layer protocol over IP i.e. connectionless service network layer protocol. We have gone through the whole FreeBSD network stack implementation referred from the book " The Design and Implementation of 4.3 BSD Operating System " by Marshall McKusick. Then we have actually debugged the whole TCP/IP stack of 4.3 FreeBSD using Kernel Debugging , we have also referred "TCP/IP Illustrated vol. II The Implementation" by W. Richard Stevens.

                            So having this much of background, we have decided to implement this protocol in the kernel space as well as in the user space. By the first week of January 2002, we will be ready with our protocol. After that in the second phase we will be researching more on the higher performance and optimization for the code. And by March 2002, we will be ready with whole optimized code for RivuS.

• What are current solutions ?

                            Randall Stewart from CISCO Inc, has implemented this protocol using UDP style syntax. But as the RFC2960 says that the protocol itself is connection-oriented service transport layer protocol, we will be implementing the totally new solution for the SCTP on FreeBSD using TCP style syntax.

                            We are very much thankful to Randall Stewart who is helping us in the progress of our project, RivuS.